Eternal
by Andraste Emeraldpetal
Summary: This could not be death, this field of slaughter in place of the halls of paradise. He could not be dying, not this slowly, not with this agony. And his wife could not be dead.
1. Chapter 1

_Third Age 1300 – The shadow over Middle Earth lengthens… The realm of Angmar is formed under the Witch King. Orcs infest the Misty Mountains. The Nazgul begin to reappear, bearing magical and poisonous morgul blades._

* * *

**Chapter One**

Thranduil opened his eyes to the sight of the muddy ground, treaded up with deep, angular bootprints. Smoke burned his eyes, stuck to his tongue to mingle with the dried blood in his mouth. One leg buckled beneath him and in the second before he caught his footing, the fall woke a sharp pain in his left shoulder.

_Dagorlad_…

He raised his head and looked out at the grey world. Bodies strewn across the field, bloody, broken, but where there should have been the glint of armour, there were only stained pale robes, wreathes of silver and flowers where there should have been helms. There were no spears or swords left in the mud, but tall lantern posts and pavilions, some intact, many cracked or fallen.

A feast under the stars. A memory farther away than those thousands of years in the past.

"Aradess!" he called out at the white bodies in the mud. He tried to move but found himself rooted where he stood leaning against a tree.

He looked up at the red arm reaching out of his sleeve, pinned above his head with a black knife in his palm, pierced through the tree beneath. He could not feel the hand, could not move the fingers. With his free right hand, he grasped the hilt to rip it out, but at his touch the weapon sent a great and terrible pain through him, lancing through his heart.

A hoarse cry burst through him into the deathly silence. The pain would have brought him to his knees if he could fall.

"Aradess!" he called again.

The sky began to pale with the dawn. The stars began to flicker and fade.

Thranduil braced himself and reached for the knife again, screaming as loud as the pain provoked. He pulled out the knife and threw it to the ground, and he dropped to his knees, fell onto his back in the mud. His heart hammered unevenly in his breast, every throb echoed in his bloody hand. He held it up before him, examining the black wound in the centre of his palm. He tried to flex his fingers, but they only twitched, painfully. He raised his right hand and found a shining red burn where he had held the knife.

From out in the field there was a cough, a cry. The ground trembled with the thunder of approaching horses, a long way off yet. Thranduil turned onto his front and pushed himself out of the mud with his ruined hands, to his knees, to his feet.

"Aradess!"

A few bodies began to move, to writhe, to scream.

Thranduil staggered forward, nothing of his grace in his movements. Every step was a fight against the sucking mud. When he stepped around a prone body, he overbalanced and stumbled. Already his breathing was heavy.

"My lord!" came a frantic voice amid the wordless cries. Thorod, a captain in the royal guard, stood alone some way across the field. His fine clothes were painted with mud and blood, some red, some black. The longknife he held seemed too great a weight for him and he stooped. "Are you all right?"

"Where is she?" Thranduil asked.

Thorod limped along to keep up with Thranduil's own sorry pace.

"The orcs drove through the middle. I think she was on this side," the captain said.

Everywhere he looked, Thranduil saw only blood, nothing of the auburn hair he searched for. Soft red that glowed like fire in the light. She had worn a heavy silver pin in her gathered braids, topped with a star laid with diamonds, a gift for the occasion. She had worn a white gown embroidered with silver thread.

"Aradess!"

She should not be somewhere like this, where there was only death and pain. He hoped that he would look up into the horizon and see her far away, immaculate, whole, and alive.

The first true light of day pierced the sky and the wound in his hand reawakened, scorching through his veins. Fresh blood swelled to the wound, dripped off his fingertips. He felt his life draining out of him, unlike any injury—far greater injuries—he had suffered before.

It was all wrong, all against the experience of his long life, against the wisdom of his people. This could not be death, this field of slaughter in place of the halls of paradise. He could not be dying, not this slowly, not with this agony. And his wife could not be dead.

"Aradess!" he half-screamed against the mortal pain in his breast.

The number of elven bodies great thinner and now there were only the few dead orcs who had been cut down in their retreat.

"We should go back, my lord," Thorod said. He had fallen several steps behind. "She must be there."

Thranduil felt as if he stood alone on the edge of the world, to receive judgement for the death and ruin behind him.

The riders sounded their horns on their approach. There would be nothing for them but to aid the survivors, comfort the dying. Revenge would have to wait.

"My lord?"

Something small glinted in the rising sun, buried in the great misshapen body of a dead orc, the last to fall, yards off and all alone. A hulk of shadow but for the shine of silver. And a cast of white silk trailing at its feet. And a wreath of red that shone like fire around its head.

"ARADESS!"

His elven instincts finally returned and Thranduil ran, coming around the far side of the orc. Aradess lay still in her white and silver gown, her loose red hair fanned around her, a knife buried in her ribs.

He was one his knees. Lifting her into his arms. Laying his forehead to hers. Taking that terrible thing out of her. Waiting for her to breathe, to open her eyes. Waiting for the fate that had long entwined them to claim him too.

"Melui-nín..." The shine of silver caught his attention and he looked up at the small blade stabbed into the orc's throat. It was a hair pin, topped with a star laid with diamonds. Thranduil ripped it free, its glory ruined with the stain of black blood.

This could not be death. He could not be dying. His wife could not be dead.

"Get me a horse!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

The new moon made for a dark and peaceful night in the valley of Imladris. Candlelight danced in every room, fallen stars floating among the winter trees. There was only the hush and trickle of water in the deepening quiet.

Celebrian gazed out a west-facing window, her mind far away. A breath of wind swept her hair over her shoulder and she imagined the fragrance of elanor flowers, a vision of spring.

"How is my lady this winter evening?" her husband asked as he slipped a blanket over her shoulders. He wrapped his arms around her, the only comfort she could ever need to keep the cold at bay.

Celebrian nestled the crown of her head against him, twined her arms over his, interlaced their fingers. She sighed indulgently.

If he had not been holding her, she would have collapsed the very next moment, overcome with shadow and dread. Her quickened breaths clouded on the air as Elrond helped her to regain her balance. He clasped her tightly beneath her elbows and guided her to sit down.

"Something is coming," she said, choking the words past the shard of ice she felt in her breast. "Death."

The horn of the northern watch blasted once and broke the crystalline peace in the valley.

She looked up at Elrond, at his hardened expression as he stared out in the direction of the call. They clutched each other's hands in her lap.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

The pain was dulling, but was not yet gone. Nevertheless, she answered, "Yes."

They unwound from each other and got to their feet, tacitly sharing a plan. While Elrond went for their sons, Celebrian went for Arwen. She was hardly ten steps from the room when she met her daughter in the corridor.

"What is it?" Arwen asked, her wide eyes luminescent even in the dim light. She was still fastening her robe around her plain wool gown. Her hair was a dark cascade over one shoulder.

"We will soon find out." Celebrian tried a reassuring smile, but she could not be sure she was not betrayed by the loud hammering of her heart, deafening in her own ears.

They met Elrond, Elladen, and Elrohir in the entrance hall as all three of them gazed out to discern an answer from the darkness. A clatter of hooves on the stone paths winding down the valley long preceded the sight of a rider.

Celebrian stood between her sons. She laid her hand over the ache in her chest, but she could do nothing else as it spread through her body, heralding whatever tragedy drove towards her home, her family.

"Call the guard," she said, barely, her lungs in spasm.

"Naneth!" Elladen held her up at one side; at the other, Elrohir took off to see her order done.

"Stay with her," Elrond said. He started down the stairs, unarmed, unprotected.

A white horse burst like a phantom from the darkness and barrelled across the narrow bridge towards them. Finally reined in on the great landing, it stumbled to a stop, lathered and wavering with exhaustion while the rider dismounted.

Thranduil stood for a long moment, his wife in his arms, his gaze fixed on Elrond, then he dropped to his knees. He laid Aradess on the ground, doubled over, and finally collapsed alongside her.

Now that the moment had come—now that she could feel relief in the assurance of her family's safety—the crushing foreboding lifted from her and Celebrian swept down the stairs after her husband. Elrond was already at Aradess' side, so Celebrian knelt by Thranduil and lifted his head onto her lap. His clothes were ruined, stained and torn. Blood had dried in the corners of his mouth.

"Thranduil. Thranduil, look at me."

He shuddered as his glamour flickered to reveal the horrific scars on his face. One pale blue eye and one white orb looked up at her.

"Save her…"

"Thranduil!" Celebrian cried as his eyes rolled back in his head. She clasped her hands around his face, but he could not be summoned back.

"He's very cold, Elrond," she said. She examined Thranduil's bloody left arm, all the bared flesh nearly black. "We must take them up."

Elrond sat still and silent with Aradess, cradling one slender hand in both of his. His lips barely moved, but Celebrian heard a prayer on his breath. Finally, he nodded in acknowledgement of her words. "Elladen, Elrohir, take him up to the healing wing!"

He looked up at her, his equanimity cracking. "Aradess is dead."

Sorrow—that cold spear she had felt before—struck its mark in her breast, heart and breath hitching at the impact. Celebrian could not stop her tears. One small submission to her grief so she could overcome the rest.

"I will take her," she said.

In the moments before the twins descended on them, Elrond bared his heartbreak. His thousands of years showed on his face. He had not quite recovered before he got to his feet and was gone after his patient.

Celebrian moved to the queen's side and saw the blood, the killing wound, through the veil of her tears. Aradess was white and lifeless as stone, the vigour of her true beauty stolen away. It seemed impossible that her lively limbs could cease to move, that her wild and boundless grace could be extinguished. What gift was immortality that could be cut down with a single blade?

"Naneth?" Arwen stood at the foot of the steps, her arms folded against herself, against the death and sorrow that pervaded the air.

"We must lay her to rest," Celebrian said, brushing a lock of auburn hair from Aradess' face. An emerald glimmered in the red tresses and Celebrian picked it up. A small pendant on a long silver chain, a green leaf.

"Legolas..." New dread pressed down on her. With shaking hands, Celebrian laid the stone over Aradess' still heart and offered a prayer of her own.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

"You do not have to stay," Celebrian said. She stood over the catafalque in the sanctuary where they had laid Aradess' body. Arwen stood across from her, visibly grey.

"I don't know what to do," she said, unable to take her gaze from Aradess' bloodless face though the sight so disturbed her.

"We will wash and dress her. We will give her back what grace we can."

Arwen nodded and that motion was enough to loose her tears down her face.

"Iell-nín." Celebrian offered a hand, but Arwen was too absorbed with her grief to notice it. Celebrian let her have a few private moments, but had to draw a line before they were both mired in their sadness. "Draw some water and bring some washcloths."

Arwen took her opportunity to leave the sight of death behind her and Celebrian set to undressing the Queen of Mirkwood. Though she had more experience than her daughter with death of their kin, Celebrian's wisdom failed her in the face of such brutality. In a time of supposed peace, no Elf—no being—should be killed so savagely, found in devotional white robes stained with mud and blood. Celebrian tried to keep her anger away from Aradess' eternal peace, but it burned like an ember deep inside her.

She unfastened the pearl buttons down the front of Aradess' surcoat, gently lifted her off the catafalque to strip it from her shoulders. Though the garment could never be salvaged, Celebrian folded it neatly and laid it on a bench in the corner of the room. Aradess' long tunic beneath had kept some of its finery, its pure white run with veins of silver embroidery. But there was still a tear where the knife had pierced her, soaked through with blood. Aradess' sleeves were stained black halfway up her arms; her hands smeared with the same colour.

The cold penetrated Celebrian's immortal skin. She wavered and caught herself on the edge of the catafalque. The air was suddenly too thin to breathe, her heart too weak to beat. For a moment, the gifts of elven grace left her and she was but a woman standing at the feet of mortality. But the light of the moon and stars renewed her luminescence and she returned to her task, albeit with trembling fingers.

Celebrian worked the long rows of tiny pearls and loops on the wrist of each sleeve, undid the silver hooks all down the front of the tunic. Removing it was a less delicate task than the surcoat and Celebrian was thankful that Arwen did not return until it was done.

"Their wedding was one of the most beautiful ceremonies I have ever seen," Celebrian said as Arwen set down the pitcher, bowl, and cloths she bore. "It opened the Greenwood to the rest of Elvendom for the first time in centuries. Everybody wanted to know who had finally tamed the great Elvenking Thranduil Oropherion."

Arwen soaked and wrung out two cloths and passed one to Celebrian. She waited to see where her mother started and kept in line. First, the black-stained hands.

"Both of them had lost their parents, so their betrothal was a little untraditional. But their people were so happy for them. I don't know that there was anyone who didn't attend, there were so many people." Celebrian wanted the memory of happier times to fill her mind and her senses, take her away from where she was.

"Her ring is lovely," Arwen said sadly.

Celebrian tried to see Aradess dressed in that famous golden gown and cape; the gown had flowed like rushing water struck by the light of the setting sun and the cape had been thousands of cloth leaves stitched together with golden thread, reaching yards behind her so it seemed like the whole forest floor moved with her.

It was jarring to imagine her then and to be washing blood off her cold body now. A pale body in a white silk undershirt and deerskin breeches, laying on a pale stone in the pale moonlight.

"She was a creature the like of which we had never seen," Celebrian said. "But we will meet her again in paradise."

* * *

After the exertion of just opening his eyes, Thranduil lay watching Elrond work over his hand, recovering what energy he would need to speak.

"Stop," he said on an inadequate breath.

"There's something in the wound," Elrond said. "Do you remember what happened?"

If Thranduil could have pulled his away, he would have. "Aradess… go…"

"Celebrian is with her."

"I didn't bring her to see Celebrian," Thranduil hissed. "Go. Save her."

For the first time, Elrond stopped. He sat up straight and looked at Thranduil, a small frown in the corners of his mouth, shadows lingering in his eyes.

"Thranduil, Aradess is gone," Elrond said, his voice a deep and heavy thing he had only just enough strength to lift.

Thranduil could not remember feeling anything but exhausted, not for ages back in his memory. He could not lift even a finger to fight Elrond's words, could hardly raise his voice but for an unyielding, "No."

Elrond flinched. "There is nothing to—"

"She cannot be dead!" Fire and ferocity ignited in Thranduil's heart. He sat up, braced on one punctured, bloody hand and one burnt one. "If she were dead, it would kill me. It would take the heart from me, it would turn the world to stone. She can only be dead if I fell trying to protect her!"

"Thranduil—"

"Go!"

Despite his obligations as a healer, Elrond left. Thranduil collapsed back in the bed, burning, rasping breath and thudding heart only agonizing him further. The rush of blood surged in his hand, thundered in his ears, but not enough to drown out what he heard.

_She is gone_.

The vision of her lying still and cold in the dawn overwhelmed him. The thought split his head, struck him blind, renewed every pain he had ever known in his long life.

Thranduil choked and instinctively sat up, the light-headedness a small discomfort by comparison. He grabbed the shallow bowl off the bedside table and vomited into it, laying his forehead against the cool porcelain between convulsions. There was little to wring out of him to begin with; he was certain the next lump in his throat would be his own heart.

Pale hands took the bowl from his trembling-tight grip, eased him to sit back against the headboard. She took his bloody hand and started to dab the wound with a warm cloth, adjusting the pressure when he winced.

"Tell me what happened," Celebrian said. She raised her eyes to him, but did not stare. Her expression was grave, but not unkind.

"I don't remember." Thranduil watched her turn his flesh from black to white, bloody to clean. The wound shone with bright fresh blood.

"Can you move your fingers?"

He curled each finger into his palm and fanned them out again.

"You rode far," she said, gently scrubbing up his wrist.

"It was all I could think to do."

"You will need rest," she said, and at her words, the sickness and the pain began to sink under the rising tide of exhaustion.

"Where is Legolas?" she asked, now only a soft voice in the dark.

"On the hunt… in Lorien."

"I will send word to him that you are here."

"Celebrian—"

"Shh. Sleep now, Thranduil."

A hand on his face, a kiss on his brow. Too familiar to be Celebrian, too sweet to be real.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Celebrian wavered where she sat next to Thranduil's bed, but resolved to get up. She pushed herself to her feet, kept one hand anchored to the chair while the other reached for the doorway. With one bodily lurch she made it through to the corridor, still clinging to the doorframe to hold herself up.

"I put him to sleep," she said. She had thrust him so deep beneath the realm of physical pain, she had exposed herself to the same deep unconsciousness. The effect would pass, but for now every sensation was a variant of overwhelming. It was a relief to close her eyes, but the chill on the air still prickled her skin, every sound no matter how faint was still a pounding in her ears.

Elrond stood up from where he had been waiting for her. He took her arms and bore her weight as she shuffled away from the sickroom.

"Legolas…" she started, but was suddenly too exhausted to finish.

"I heard," Elrond said. "We'll send word for him to come immediately."

"Don't tell him." Celebrian was not certain she had spoken out loud; she could no longer tell if she was even moving. The numb darkness started to swallow her.

"Don't tell him what?"

"His mother… he should not learn it from a message." Celebrian did not speak again after that. All she knew was the painless embrace of oblivion.

* * *

"What happened!" Elrohir cried. The sight of his father carrying his mother's lifeless body was too much for a night that had unveiled nothing but tragedy.

"She put Thranduil under a spell of deep sleep," Elrond said. He walked past his sons lingering in his study and laid Celebrian on the settee by the fireplace.

"So he's still alive?" Elladen asked.

"Stay with your mother and make sure she eats something when she wakes up. This has all taken a toll on her."

When he had left Thranduil and gone to the sanctuary to fetch Celebrian for assistance, Elrond had found her almost as deathly pale as Aradess was. She had always been sensitive to the forces of the world—he mother's daughter in that regard—but the peace they had forged in Imladris had shielded her and left her defenses out of practice. Even without the effects of her supernatural senses, the loss of a friend, the end of a great love, the death of a mother were all difficult to bear. Elrond's heart broke for Aradess and Thranduil and Legolas, and for the people of Mirkwood, and it splintered the very centre of him to think about how it would feel to lose his wife.

"I must go back," he said, but he paused when he saw the deep and unspoken fear in his sons' eyes. As he was disturbed by the thought of losing his wife, so were they by the thought of losing their mother.

Elrond tried to comfort them with a gesture from when they were young boys and laid a hand of the side of each of their faces, even managing a small smile for them.

"Send word to Lorien for Legolas to come immediately. Say only that his parents are here, nothing of… the full extent of what's happened. He should learn that news much more gently."

"Yes, Ada," said Elladen. A nod from Elrohir.

"Good," Elrond said. He left his sons to return straight to Thranduil's sickroom, where he did not know where to even begin.

Since Celebrian had subdued Thranduil enough to clean the wound on his left hand, Elrond could now clearly see the puncture mark. It went cleanly through the palm and was glistening with fresh blood, but was otherwise unremarkable. Elrond had cut off Thranduil's clothes as soon as he had brought him in, but there were no other marks to be found on his body. This wound and the burn on his other hand were all that had taken down the warrior king. At least, they were the only injuries that Elrond could treat, if he could figure out what gave them such power. In thousands of year, he had never seen a cure for a broken heart.

The immaculate flesh of Thranduil's torso, throat, and face began to crumble and melt into the scars and burns of his true form. The mind that conjured the glamour was too deep in sleep, the heart too weak. His whole left side from hip to brow was only the thinnest layer of translucent skin over still muscle. A huge white scar wrapped over his right ribs. It traced all the way around to his left shoulder, Elrond knew. He remembered when it had been a great and bloody gash, remembered the fear of feeling so much blood gush over his hands. He had been all that stood between Thranduil and death, and had been a desperate but effective guard then. Thranduil had been king for one day after the fall of his father, and to save his life had been a worthy cause.

But tonight, with Aradess' body only steps away, Elrond could not bring himself to feel quite so mighty. Once again, his efforts alone stood between Thranduil and death; but this time, saving his life also meant denying him reunion with the woman who had made it worth living.

What finally compelled Elrond to move was the thought of having to stand before Thranduil's son and say he had done nothing. But as he turned toward the store of medicine and supplies in the adjoining room, a shadow hovering over the bed caught his eye. He wheeled around to face it, but it was gone. Thranduil lay still, his breathing even, no sign of disturbance.

The hand that Celebrian had cleaned was tinted black again, but not with smears of orc blood. The veins diverging from the wound were dark as ink, suffused up to his elbow and spreading. Whatever it was, it would eventually reach his heart.

Elrond ran to the storeroom.

* * *

"What will we say to him?" Arwen asked, her question for all the forces of the world, though only her brothers were there to hear. She leaned against a grey pillar on the balcony off her father's study, staring out at the valley in its sparkling winter splendour in the early morning light. Elrohir sat nearby on the edge of the balustrade, his legs dangling over a hundred-foot drop. Elladen hovered in the doorway, keeping watch on both his siblings and his mother.

"I don't think that will be up to us," Elrohir said.

"I'm sure Ada and Naneth will be the ones to talk to him," Elladen added.

"We'll have to say _something_," Arwen said. Her fingertips tingled with the memory of Aradess' cold flesh. She had helped undress and wash her, had shrouded her in white linen herself once her mother had been called away, yet all the while she had expected the queen to move, to wake as if she were only sleeping. Once she had finished, Arwen had leaned out the window and wept, gulping in air as if she had been holding her breath the whole while. She had cried for Aradess and for Thranduil and his broken heart, and for her own fear. But thinking of Legolas pained her beyond tears, beyond screaming. She could not imagine if tomorrow came and someone told her her parents were gone, without a chance to fight for them, without a chance to say goodbye if that was all that remained; if she did not have Elladen and Elrohir to carry each other through. These were fears for mortals, and yet after a thousand years of wisdom, Arwen felt no better equipped to face them.

"You said you sent word to tell him what happened?" she asked, dashing away a stray tear.

"The message only told him to come and that his parents were here," Elladen replied.

"What could we have told him anyway? _We _don't know what happened," Elrohir said, an edge of frustration in his usually mirthful voice. "The King of Mirkwood appeared in the middle of the night bloody and wounded with his wife's body and beyond that we know nothing."

"They were dressed in festival clothes," Arwen said. "They must have been ambushed."

"Them and how many others, and by whom? There may yet be greater grief than the loss of Queen Aradess. What if they were hunted? What if whoever did this is closing in on us?" Elrohir said, increasingly frantic. He spun back to face his siblings and hopped off the balustrade. He marched past Arwen, past Elladen.

"Where are you going?" Elladen asked.

"To scout," Elrohir said without turning back. He was already at the door when he spoke, and then he was gone.

Arwen looked to her remaining brother and they shared a frown, but neither moved to follow him. Soon their mother would wake and they would have some comfort. Their father would bring Thranduil back to health. Legolas would come and they would return to Mirkwood, and Arwen could try to put the peace she had known back together.

* * *

_A kiss in the dark. The smell of wildflowers, warm grass beneath him. Thranduil did not open his eyes, but reached out to where he knew her hair would be loose around her face. He caught one silky lock, combed his fingers through to the end. He smiled and breathed in the warmth of her, and at last opened his eyes._

_Aradess sat beside him on a sunny hill, gazing out at the green world. Her fiery hair was unbound and blazed over her shoulders. She wore a long sleeveless doublet over a plain linen shirt and breeches as was her custom, even at court. She left prim Elven femininity to the ladies of Lorien and Imladris; expectations, as with everything else, were different in the Greenwood. _

"_Did you have a good dream?" she asked as he sat up beside her. _

"_I don't think so," he replied. He could not remember, and the glorious summer quickly washed any darkness from his spirit. Still, there was twinge in his heart with an origin he could not place._

_She turned toward him, eyes as green and alive as the world around them, and smiled. "Then don't tell me. Not on a day like this."_

_Thranduil leaned back on his elbows, laid his hand over hers. He had never been so aware, so grateful for the golden sun, the warmth that soaked his skin. He must have dreamt of the cold; if he had, he did not want to remember. _

_He laced his fingers through hers and held on a little tighter, unable—even in the sunlight—to ignore the gnawing feeling that the world was about to crumble beneath him._


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

Celebrian picked a wafer from her mostly untouched plate and made a show of eating it for the two pairs of eyes staring at her. It had taken most of the day to bring herself to do much more than that; she was finally sitting up, but still laid on the settee in Elrond's study where she had woken late in the morning. She made every effort not to slip back into that eclipsing sleep, but still it lingered close at hand, a cliff she tiptoed along the edge of. Even as she gazed out into her own valley, she imagined the realm of dreams and what waited there. She saw glimpses of Thranduil and Aradess together, free of pain.

"Do you want me to go after him, Naneth?" Elladen asked, staring at her as if her chewing were the task upon which rested the fate the land. He had brought a chair to her bedside and finally sat after a day of pacing.

She laid her hand on his knee and looked at him, then at Arwen sitting at the end of the settee. "No, let your brother be. This house is not meant to be your gilded cage."

Arwen looked much better than she had the night before and Celebrian chastised herself for not having faith in her daughter's resilience. Now her concern shifted to her son, who seemed to have only half his usual vigor in his brother's absence. With such sudden death and tragedy brought down upon them, Celebrian understood the reflex to hold loved ones close. But she also sympathized with her younger son's impulse to run—the very same impulse that had driven Thranduil this great distance to do something, anything, in reaction to the helplessness felt in the face of mortality.

Still, her own words to her children did not stop Celebrian from listening for incoming riders on the bridge.

"How long will he sleep?" Arwen asked.

"That depends," Celebrian replied. "Thranduil may give into his exhaustion and his injuries until his body has made some recovery."

"Or?" Arwen asked when her mother failed to immediately provide the second option.

"Or Thranduil will do what he always does. He will fight and when he wakes up he will fight the pain as well."

Some of last night's greyness returned to Arwen's face as she looked out at the valley, steeped in the utter dark of the moonless night. She clutched the edge of Celebrian's blanket.

"Do you think he will die, Naneth?"

_Did you have a good dream?_

The sound of Aradess' voice in her head made Celebrian shiver. "Your father will try everything he can, but there will come a point when we must accept that this may be beyond our own will. Thranduil has survived many terrible things and he may yet overcome this. I'm inclined to believe that he will survive for the love of his son if nothing else, but I will not say that his pain in losing Aradess will fade. It will be a scar on his heart for as long as he lives."

"Are love and pain so intertwined?" Arwen asked, her focus far away in the dark.

_I don't think so_.

"I wish I could tell you they are not," Celebrian replied. She reached out her hand and Arwen took it.

_Then don't tell me._

"Are you tired, Naneth?" Elladen asked. Sitting at her side, something of fatigue wearing through his Elven features, he had never looked more like his father.

"I am," she replied. "Would you go and see how your father is doing?"

Elladen nodded, but did not get up. "Rest now. We will be here if you need anything."

Celebrian felt Elladen take her hand on his knee and press it gently between his warm palms. She closed her eyes and let half her mind drift away while the other half continued to keep her balanced on the edge of that deep sleep, her children's hands like guides in the dark.

* * *

_The summer air was tainted with the reek of smoke. Thranduil sat up straight at looked out at the great wood surrounding their bare hill._

"_We should go," he said. He made to get up, but Aradess pinned his hand to the ground with her own._

"_We can't," she said, her voice thin. She raised her green eyes to his face and where they had once glittered with life, they now shone with some fever. A violent cough tore up her throat._

"_Melui-nîn." Thranduil moved to kneel in front of her while she clasped both her hands over her mouth. Her whole body wracked with the effort to breathe. _

"_Don't… go…" she gasped._

_Thranduil laid his hands over her shoulders as she recovered. "I'm not."_

_Aradess looked up at him, strands of red hair stuck to the tears on her cheeks. Her lips were bright red with blood. She opened her hands to reveal the blood splattered across her palms. _

"_What's happening?" she whispered._

_The once-clear sky clouded over with black thunderheads. All the light as far as Thranduil could see was gone. Still, the smell of smoke pervaded the air, but with no sign of fire. _

"_We have to go, Aradess."_

"_No!" she screamed, tearing herself away from him. She staggered to her feet and came to her full height without any regard for the blood seeping rapidly across her stomach. The blood on her clothes, on her hands, on her lips turned from red to black. She shrieked wildly—no sound she had ever made before—and sprang at him. Thranduil held up an arm in defense, but made no move to fight her. _

_Even in whatever form she had taken, the impact was too great to have been Aradess. Thranduil hit the ground and glared up at the knife hovering over his face, up at the hideous orc wielding it. He wrapped both hands around the orc's wrist, grappling to keep the blade from piercing his eye. The orc leaned in closer, laid all of its weight into the thrust of its arms. Twisting his face away, Thranduil let the knife plunge into the ground, let the orc overbalance itself. He drove one knee up through the space between the orc's legs and kicked it off of him. _

"_Thranduil!"_

_He pulled the knife out of the ground and in one great arc brought it down in the orc's throat beside him. Ripping it free, he got to his feet. Thranduil expected battle and carnage around him, but there was nothing. The dream hill was gone, the muddy field was gone. He stood on a plane of darkness while screams and cries echoed around him. _

_Some invisible force slammed against him and his back hit something solid. One hand closed around his throat, another beat his right hand against the wall until he dropped the knife. Thranduil threw his free arm out though there was nothing to hit. _

"_Thranduil!"_

_An orb of light spun slowly in the darkness and unfolded into a tall, cloaked figure, an insubstantial thing of smoke and shadow. It drifted toward him and Thranduil could hear its guttural breaths. Though the invisible forces lifted off him, he could not move. _

_It drew a blade from within its cloak. "__Gu kibum kelkum-ishi, burzum-ishi."_

_The voice froze Thranduil's blood in his veins. Without touch, the figure raised Thranduil's left arm over his head. It was so close now, its cloak brushed against him, a cold breath of death. It raised its head, a black chasm where its face should have been. _

"_Akha-gum-ishi ashi gurum." It thrust its knife through Thranduil's hand and Thranduil screamed._

* * *

"I'll go," Arwen said once her mother's grip on her hand went slack. "Stay here in case Elrohir comes back."

Elladen looked up at her and gave a grateful nod. With his free hand, he took a date from his mother's plate and popped it into his mouth. He tried to smile and though it was small, it relieved some of the stress from his face.

"Come back with something warm to drink?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. Arwen left the study in which she and her brother had nested all day and walked out into the cold night. The wind picked up her hem and the ends of her hair, blew down her neck in what had become too familiar a sensation this past day. It had been only one day…

Arwen was certain she had never been so exhausted in her life, though almost all she had done for most of the day was sit and wait. Sit with her mother, wait for Elrohir to return, wait for her father to come to them and announce his success and Thranduil's recovery. And though it was not something she should expect for several days, she was impatient for word from Lorien that Legolas was on his way.

Without knocking or announcing herself, Arwen stepped into the sickroom. The air was heavy with steam and the cloying smell of valerian. Her father sat in a chair next to the bed, bent over his work. All she could see was Thranduil's face, utterly still, but covered in burns—old scars, but Arwen had never seen them before.

"Arwen," Elrond said, his voice low and strained.

"I came to see how you're doing," she said too loudly in her own defense. She regretted coming in without permission, for intruding on whatever secret of Thranduil's this was.

"I need your help."

Though Arwen had every intention of retreating back to the study with some vague description of her father's efforts, she could not run now from his request. She stepped up to the bed, to the full sight of Thranduil's devastated body. She had never seen such brutality.

"Hold this down tight to staunch the bleeding." Elrond stood and made way for Arwen to take his place holding the cloth to the crook of Thranduil's elbow.

She took her post and pressed both hands around Thranduil's arm. She did not want to know what course of treatment led to more bleeding, but the fear of that small amount of gore became immaterial when she saw his blackened hand. His veins ran like dark roots up his arm, a growing shadow that had stalled with whatever it was Arwen now assisted with.

Jars clinked and rattled in the storeroom at her father's uncommonly frantic rummaging. He whispered names to himself, some herbs Arwen had heard of, many she had not. A rare cure for an extraordinary injury.

Had Thranduil not laid so lifelessly still, Arwen may never have noticed the small twitch in his brow. No further reaction followed, but it was still a mark of Celebrian's prediction that he would fight through the spell of deep sleep. Arwen could not say which might be worse: Thranduil waking up in whatever state of wounded or poisoned he was in, or her mother risking her strength by casting him under again.

A warm spot of blood began to seep through the cloth Arwen held to Thranduil's arm. She watched the bright red mark spread and she pressed down even harder, glancing up at his face for any signs of waking.

Elrond came out of the storeroom carrying a book, flipping back and forth between pages. "Hmm… athelas."

"What are we doing, Ada?" Arwen asked.

"Bloodletting. Barbaric," he replied without looking up from his reading. "But it was all—"

Thranduil's whole body arched like a bow and he screamed.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

Thranduil screamed so hard that it echoed across the valley and up into the stars. His fear possessed every fibre of his being; the strength in his arm alone threw Arwen back.

"Hold him down!"

Arwen pressed back down on his arm and on his leg just above his knee. Elrond took the other side.

"Thranduil, listen to me! You are hurt, but you are safe!" Elrond yelled above Thranduil's voice. "Thranduil, you are injured and you must lay still!"

Arwen was halfway up the bed before she realized what her plan was. She laid a hand on the side of Thranduil's face and bent close to his ear.

"Shhh," she whispered. "Hush now. Lie still."

Thrashing turned to trembling, turned to ragged breathing. Arwen went on murmuring comforts to him, unsure if she had any approximation of Aradess' voice in hers, but it seemed to be soothing him. She bit back any reaction when he seized her hand in his, his palm slick with sweat or blood.

"We… have… to go…" Thranduil gasped.

"We will," Arwen said. She raised her gaze to where her father stood.

Elrond looked no less terrified now that Thranduil was still. He glanced at their joined hands, at their nearly pressed together faces. Pale and mutilated Thranduil next to his wide-eyed, vital daughter.

"Do you feel anything?" Elrond asked softly, nodding towards Thranduil's wounded hand.

Arwen shook her head. "I'm all right."

"Stay there. I need Elladen and Elrohir to do something for me. I won't go far." Elrond paused halfway out the door. "If you need anything or feel anything, call for me."

Arwen settled in her position, sitting down on the edge of the bed, rearranging her hand around Thranduil's. The longer she stayed beside him, the calmer he became, even though she had stopped speaking. Though it had come to a terrifying head, Arwen took Thranduil's desperate fight out of sleep as a good sign of his will to live.

She had not truly understood her mother's optimism that Thranduil could survive nigh anything, not until she had seen the wreckage of his body that had come long before these dark injuries. The right side of his body was almost completely covered in burns—down his torso, over his shoulder, up the side of his face. Huge scars marred the other side of his ribs. Arwen could not fathom what it took for him to keep his scars hidden, what the constant glamour cost. How many had ever seen his true form? Though Arwen knew of Thranduil's stubbornness more by reputation than experience—an absurd thing to consider while she nearly lay in bed with him—the proof of the brutality he had survived helped forgive his less peaceful qualities.

"It looks like this," Elrond said as he swept into the room, Elladen close behind him. "Athelas. An old remedy forgotten by most by this age. I'm willing to try it, if you can find it."

"Of course, Ada," Elladen said, but when he noticed Arwen, the resolution left his face.

"I'm fine," she assured him.

Her comforts meant nothing as Elladen's gaze moved from Arwen to Thranduil. She watched her brother's grey eyes trace the lines of the scars.

"It's just for his hand," Elrond said, bringing his son back to focus. "Whoever attacked them had terrible magic in their arsenal. I have never seen the like of something like this, and I don't want to see it advance any further. In everything I've read and everything I've tried, I think athelas is the best course."

"I'll go," Elladen said. His own voice seemed to finally spur him.

As she watched his leave, Arwen hoped his search would be double successful: that he would find the athelas for Thranduil, and Elrohir for the sake of his own sanity.

"What will it do, Ada?" Arwen still spoke softly even though Thranduil seemed to have fallen back into his deep sleep. She stroke her fingers over his, so cold, the unnatural grey of his flesh more pronounced next to her healthy pale skin. With her other hand, Arwen brushed her thumb across his forehead. Only the cold sweat of subsiding fear, no fever.

"Athelas is as old remedy from Numenor," Elrond said, circling to the other side of the bed. "It should purify the wound."

Arwen watched her father think.

"The riddle of the wound remains," he said, softly enough as to be speaking only to himself. "If it is poison or…"

"What else could it be but poison, Ada?"

Elrond showed no sign of hearing her and was silent for a long moment. "When the Black Breath blows and death's shadow grows and all lights pass… come athelas."

"But the Black Breath would mean—"

"It could not be, calad-nín," he said, smiling at her, showing the depth of his exhaustion. "But it is my hope that the athelas will work all the same."

"Why don't you go see Naneth?" Arwen suggested. "I can stay with him until you return. She's resting, so you won't be gone long."

What little reluctance Elrond had was worn down at Arwen's insistence. He hauled himself and what seemed like the weight of the world out of the chair on the other side of the bed, and left the room.

Arwen gathered her legs onto the bed and stretched out alongside the King of the Woodland Realm, still holding his injured hand, still breathing against his neck.

"You are a warrior of your people," she said, not sure if she was still trying to speak as Aradess or if she spoke as herself. She had never said so many words to him in all her life as she had in the past few minutes. Her voice had soothed him before, even if he was too deep in his unconsciousness now to hear her; it did a little to help her too, now that she lay in the silence, in the dark. She talked on until she put herself into some meditation that took her she knew not where. Perhaps it was not a matter of where but _when_: Imladris, her home, before it had become so suffused with death. The golden valley, slowly turning green with the coming spring. But there was also a smell of smoke, a wreath of it around the house, tendrils reaching in.

Arwen opened her eyes and had to squint against the bright sunlight pouring through the window. Elrohir stood over her, still hooded and wrapped in his grey cloak. The grimness that had haunted his face the day before was tempered with some of his usual humour.

"Good morning," he said as she blinked up at him.

"Elladen was…" Arwen sat up, stiff from laying so resolutely still on the edge of the bed. Thranduil still slept soundly beside her.

"He found me. And I was so glad to go flower-picking in the middle of the night," Elrohir said with a playful roll of his eyes.

"You found it!"

"We did." Elrohir offered his hands to help her up. "But I hear it was you who did Ada proud."

Arwen got to her feet. Her only response to her brother's compliment was to blush. Wrapping her hands around the back of her sore neck, she joined her father at his worktable against the wall. He was tearing handfuls of athelas into a porcelain bowl.

Elrond glanced up at her, quickly returned to work, then looked back at her, staring. He laid his damp hands on the sides of her face. She was so pale.

"Arwen, go with your brothers," he said urgently. "I do not want you to come back here."

"Ada—"

"Go now, Arwen. Lie down," Elrond said.

Banished, Arwen left with her brothers. She walked between them, taking each of their arms in a gesture of reunion, but truly, she felt weighed down, nearly faint, as that smoke began to fill her memory. Elladen and Elrohir found the will to laugh at whatever they were talking about, but Arwen could not. She wanted to collapse, to cry, and she could not entirely understand why.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

"Arwen!" Celebrian pressed her hands over mouth and froze where she stood on the balcony overlooking the dawn. Her shawl fell from her shoulders as she ran into the study. She laid her hands on her daughter's face and stared, her blue eyes wide. Elladen and Elrohir back away when their mother charged at them.

Arwen flinched at how hot her mother's hands were. Without her brothers, she had to keep her own balance and her weak knees were nothing to bear her heavy heart.

Celebrian stared into her daughter's eyes, so overwhelmed with shadow the grey had been swallowed up by pure black. Arwen's bloodless lips and cheeks, her cold flesh marked her with mortality.

"Naneth…" Arwen clung to her.

"Come, sit down," Celebrian said, her words slowed with her efforts to calm her voice. She schooled the fear out of her features as she moved about the room gathering a glass, a bottle of wine, and the platter of her own breakfast just delivered while she had stood in the fresh air. Her rejuvenation now proved to be temporary.

"Drink this," she said as she poured the glass three-quarters full with white wine. "All of it."

Arwen took the glass and downed half of it with a grimace on her face before she had to pause.

"Sit with her," Celebrian said to Elrohir. She squeezed his shoulder but was otherwise too frantic to rejoice in his return. Holding her elder son's gaze, she silently demanded he follow her. She took their discussion down a flight of stairs and into a narrow corridor meant only for coming and going; it was shadowed by the study balcony above, with hardly enough room for them to stand side by side.

"What happened?" she asked, her forced calm cracking, her renewed strength rapidly waning.

"Ada said he needed help and I went with him to King Thranduil's sickroom," Elladen replied, speaking quickly, as if it were a tale he had been waiting to tell. "He said Thranduil had gotten worse and he needed athelas for treatment."

Elladen either did not notice or was too obedient to stop when Celebrian's eyes grew wide at the name of the herb.

"Arwen was sitting on the bed with him, holding his hand. She looked a little frightened but not unwell. She said she felt fine," Elladen insisted. "I left right after that."

"And this morning?"

"When Elrohir and I came to deliver the athelas, she looked unrested, maybe, but not like that. Ada told her she wasn't to come back." Elladen became more undone by the moment. He leaned against the wall, dropped his gaze to the floor. "What's happening, Naneth?"

"If your father turned to athelas, then it will be over soon," Celebrian replied, folding her arms around herself. "Athelas is an ancient remedy for old and terrible magic thought to be long gone from the world."

Elladen's head snapped up, his face pale and full of pain.

"Arwen will recover," Celebrian said. "She would not have been in contact with it for long. And I'm sure Elrohir will have her spirits back up in no time."

Comforted with that, the tense fear left Elladen's body and he wilted with relief, with exhaustion. Celebrian was thankful for that at least; any questions beyond those, she had no answer for. Only terrible memory of an evil that had almost annihilated the world, a fight that could have taken her husband before she had even met him, built a family and a haven with him. Thranduil had barely survived the same war. Sacrifices that had won them all peace at last, or had it only bought them an illusion? Thranduil had found the love of his life, built a family and a haven with her only for hundred of years to collapse and bring him back to the cruelty and brutality of war. Darkness and evil descending on the age of peace, the age of their children. Nazgûl and orc raids and bloodshed.

"Shall we go back?" Celebrian asked gently. For a moment, the tall Elven warrior across from her became a little boy once again, thoughtful and quiet, kept from being too grim with the help of his younger brother's mischievous spirit and easy smile.

Elladen nodded, but it was a long moment's effort before he stood up straight. Celebrian kept behind him, watching the tension of his older-brother comportment work through his shoulders.

Celebrian felt her own strength shudder though her. Enough to elevate her past fear, enough for Arwen, enough for her sons, enough for Elrond, enough to face what began to stir again in the deepest dark of Middle Earth. Not in thirteen hundred years had she felt the full magnitude of the magic and might of her Noldor blood.

On their return to the study, they found Arwen clinging to Elrohir's shoulders, weeping loudly. He had closed his arms around her, but there was little else to be done while Arwen trembled and cried without restraint.

"Arwen." Celebrian knelt beside her children and pried Arwen's fingers from Elrohir's cloak. She collected Arwen's cold hands in hers and blew on them, rubbed them to encourage some warmth.

"I can't—I can't…" Arwen half-screamed, breathless from her hitching sobs.

"This will run its course," Celebrian assured her.

"Imladris was burning!"

"It was only a dream." Celebrian brushed back the strands of dark hair that stuck to Arwen's tears. "This is the work of dark magic, but it will fade."

"What about Ada?" Elladen asked. "If this is from contact with—"

"We must leave him to finish his work or Thranduil will certainly die," Celebrian said firmly. "I don't want any of you to go near that room until your father says it is safe."

Elladen nodded. Before Elrohir could dissent, his elder brother grasped his shoulder and steered him out to the balcony.

Arwen still fought to stop her tears, to take rein over her delirium, but her struggle only exhausted her. Each heave of her shoulders seemed like it could collapse her, her fear still burning on whatever it could find within her. At least it brought colour and warmth back to her, though it carried her beyond health and into fever. Arwen's sobs gave way to gasps and small cries.

"Even if you don't feel like it, you need to eat something," Celebrian said.

Arwen took a few attempts to master her breath before she bit into the waybread Celebrian held out for her. She frowned in disgust, but kept chewing.

"Once you rest for a while you'll feel better. I promise."

With some coaxing, Arwen lay down on the cushions spread across the bench. Her eyes had returned to their true grey, but they were stormy and haunted.

"Don't go," she begged her mother, grasping at her hands, up her arms.

"I must fetch something for you, but I will be back soon." Celebrian pressed her forehead to her daughter's. "Your brothers are here if you need anyone."

Arwen nodded, but it was still Celebrian who had to remove herself from her grip. As she made her way back to the stairs, Celebrian caught Elladen's gaze where he stood on the balcony and inclined her head to indicate where Arwen was laying. Elladen nodded and immediately headed inside, leaving Elrohir to watch over the world.

Celebrian swept silent down the stairs. She still wore the gown and robe she had on two nights ago, when all this had started. She had not been back to her own chambers since then and only now did she truly consider what had happened before Thranduil had arrived. The memory of the cold that had struck her heart was not so far away as it had felt and Celebrian had to pause and wait for it to pass. She had thought it was Aradess' death she had sensed, but it was the curse Thranduil bore. If she had had more that mere moments between her premonition and the shocking arrival of the bloodied King of Mirkwood on her doorstep, she might have realized, but then so much had carried her away; the spell she had put over Thranduil, what it had done to her, what it had done to him. She had left him undefended to the Black Breath's corruption, thrust him deep underwater to drown. He had borne it all the way from Mirkwood; it was a marvel he was still alive. And Elrond had been closed in a room with it for days.

The recent events had sent the other inhabitants of Imladris deep within their own homes and Celebrian met no one as she ran through the corridors. She came up to the sickroom, but kept a safe distance. There was a slow, deep pulse on the air, striking her oldest memories, her oldest fears.

"Elrond," she called up the corridor to the silent, empty doorway. "Elrond, if there is enough athelas, I would like to prepare a tincture for Arwen."

"Is she all right?" The voice—thin, strained, shaking—was hardly recognizable as her husband's.

She took two steps closer to the room. "She dreamt Imladris was burning. It upset her quite violently and she's been through enough these past days."

"I didn't… I didn't think she would do what she did. This wasn't…"

Three steps closer. Celebrian's ears prickled at the hum of magic from within. "She took drastic measures in the care of her fellow being. She must be your daughter."

Elrond laughed, a fragile thing that could easily have been a sob.

"When you're done, I want you to come with me," Celebrian said. "You need respite from this."

Elrond came into the doorway, leaning heavily against the frame. He held a cloth in his hands that he wrung and unravelled, wrung and unravelled. His eyes were rimmed with red, lines were etched around his frown. Where Arwen had been directly affected by the Black Breath, Elrond looked ready to collapse from fighting it.

"How is he?" Celebrian asked.

"I don't know what good any remedy will do after he's carried it for this long," Elrond replied, staring down at his hands. "And I don't know how he'll survive both the Black Breath and the knowledge that his wife is dead. I don't know how any of this has happened. I don't know what to do."

"Elrond, that is the darkness speaking." Celebrian was only a step away from him now. "If he's resting, you should come away for an hour and recover."

"I don't want him to wake up alone." A single tear stole down Elrond's face.

"One hour," Celebrian said again. "The darkness with dissipate with the athelas, and we will each take watch over him."

Elrond looked back over his shoulder and took a deep breath. "I'll prepare that tincture and we'll take it to Arwen."

Celebrian waited for her husband to re-emerge and they walked together through to pale, cool afternoon. She took his hand and said nothing as he leaned heavily against her.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

They ate sparsely and in silence, but they were together. Each contemplated what it meant to be reunited with their family; a husband who could look up and see his wife, children who could sit between their parents, siblings who had each other for protection and comfort. Elrond recovered in the embrace of his family, whole and safe, especially as Arwen overcame her brush with the Black Breath. Still, it was impossible not to consider that the peace forged for their children's generation was broken now. This was the beginning of unrest, the first drops of impending bloodshed.

Elrond took Arwen's and Elrohir's hands as his children sat on either side of him. "I should go back."

"I'll go," Celebrian said, standing. "I've rested, and you're exhausted, Elrond. We'll take turns on watch; no one should stay longer than a few hours until the darkness is purified. Elrohir, your watch will follow mine."

Her tone compelled only silent agreement. Through the night, Celebrian, Elrohir, and Elladen watched over Thranduil. Arwen stayed in the study to watch over her father. Elrond never closed his eyes, but he stayed near the warmth of the fire until dawn. In their turns, Celebrian and the twins returned, dressed in fresh clothes, hair damp from recent washing, none looking worse for their proximity to the dark curse over Thranduil.

In the days that followed they kept a similar routine. The watch periods grew longer as the athelas did its work. The corruption in Thranduil's blood receded. The wound in his hand, though stubborn, began to heal. He showed no sign of waking, but neither was he disturbed with dreams.

Travellers through the valley carried whispers of a massacre in Mirkwood, but most of the details seemed to be the work of fireside storytelling. The Elves of Imladris maintained their silence. No one spoke of the body in the sanctuary or of the mysterious cause that Lord Elrond's family was suddenly so committed to.

Celebrian saw Elves make their way to Aradess' resting place and found the tributes they left during her own daily visits. Wreaths of flowers, silver talismans, written prayers. In the midst of her grief, Celebrian felt that she merely haunted a few rooms as a silent spectre with a grey shawl trailing behind her. The time for intervention had passed and now she could only watch. She tempered even her simplest hopes: Thranduil did not need to wake yet so long as he still lived, Legolas did not need to arrive today, her children needed only to rest while their own sorrows taxed them so. She could not rid the world of poison or death or sadness. There was no power in the world for that.

The horn of a far-off watchman broke the week's worth of dismal quiet. Moments later, Arwen came up to the sanctuary.

"The party from Lorien are nearly here," she said.

"I heard," Celebrian said. "Give me your arm."

They walked together through the corridors, Celebrian holding tight to her daughter's hand. They met Elladen and Elrohir, who checked their nervous energy to stay alongside their mother's stately pace.

"Elrohir, please go tell you father," she said. "Elladen, you and Arwen will do whatever the rest of the riders need so I can speak to Legolas in private."

Elrohir peeled away from them. Elladen and Arwen showed their obedience with their silence, which carried on as they waited at the top of the stairs overlooking the western landing. Celebrian leaned heavily against the balustrade, weakened with the thought of what she had to do. She finally stood upright only with great force of will.

For the second time in a week, Mirkwood royalty came thundering up the bridge alone on a white horse, dismounted, and looked up at the keepers of Imladris with utter desperation. Legolas wore a bow and a sword crossed over his back, leather armour, and a long hunting knife on his belt, but his face spoke only of helplessness.

"My parents," he said.

"Come with me, Prince Legolas," Celebrian said. She began to descend the stairs, but he bounded up them to meet her.

Arwen and Elladen bowed their heads as Legolas passed them without a glance.

"Where is your escort?" Celebrian asked as she led him through the hallways.

"I rode ahead," he replied. "Please, Lady Celebrian, tell me why my mother and father are here."

Celebrian halted and turned to face him, laid a hand on his arm, hoping he could not feel her hand shaking. She had to maintain her own composure, to comfort him. In a moment, she was going to change his life forever.

"Legolas there was an attack in Mirkwood."

He bore that silently, but his suffering was clear on his young face.

"Your parents were injured and your father brought your mother here seeking the help of Lord Elrond," she continued. "Your father has been improving in my husband's care, but he is still very unwell." Celebrian took a deep breath. "Legolas, I'm so sorry. Your mother did not survive."

Legolas staggered back a step, gasped as if he had been struck. Celebrian felt the strength drain out of him and suppressed the urge to embrace him as she would her own child in such a crisis.

"How?" he asked.

"She was stabbed. By the time they reached the valley, there was nothing we could do."

Legolas weakly wrenched his arm from her grasp and turned away. His shoulders shuddered violently, but there was no sound from him, not even breath.

"May I take you to her?" Celebrian asked.

He nodded and Celebrian turned so that he could keep his tears or his fury or whatever it was he felt hidden from her. They wove through the corridors deep into the house and ascended the stairs to the sanctuary. Celebrian stepped aside in the doorway so he could pass her. She dropped her gaze to the floor and blinked back her tears, her grief returning with as much force as the night Aradess was carried here.

Aradess lay as pale and still as the stone that bore her. There was no mistaking that the life had gone from her.

Legolas closed his hand around her cold fingers and moaned in pain. He dropped to his knees, nearly doubled over, sobbing, one hand braced against the floor, the other gripping his mother's hand. Celebrian sat down on the stone bench by the window and held tight to the edges of the seat to keep herself back. She would not leave him, but it was not her place to do anything else.

As she watched over him, Legolas became a small child in her eyes. A little boy who could only weep at the world's infinite cruelty without his mother or father to protect him. Three hundred years was plenty of time to learn the bow and the sword to keep death at bay, but it was not enough to learn an understanding of death itself.

Legolas cried until he had nothing left, and then he trembled and struggled to breathe until his grief exhausted him. He pressed his forehead against the catafalque just to stay upright.

There were few in Middle Earth who knew enough of Thranduil to believe it, but Legolas' vulnerability—like so much of him—was his father's. What his heart felt moved him completely, whether it was love or anger or pain. Celebrian knew that what she witnessed now was the total breaking Thranduil must have felt and she felt a cold breath blow up her spine to remember Elrond's words. _I don't know how he'll survive both the Black Breath and the knowledge that his wife is dead._

Celebrian silenced her mind. If she thought about what it would do to Legolas to lose both his parents, it would undo her.

"Legolas, let me take you to Lord Elrond's study," Celebrian said, her voice hoarse. "He will have news of your father."

She did not expect Legolas to get so easily to his feet. He wavered where he stood and his head was heavy between his shoulders, but he stayed up. Celebrian led the way. She could hardly hear him behind her; Legolas was only a shadow that followed her own.

The study was warm with a freshly stoked fire, and some food had been laid out, as requested. Elrond awaited them, but he was not alone. Celeborn and Galadriel stood side by side, their hoods down, but otherwise still dressed in all their travelling clothes.

"Our deepest condolences, Prince Legolas," Celeborn said. He continued speaking, but Celebrian could not hear it for the voice in her head that overwhelmed all else.

_The Black Shadow was here_, Galadriel said.

_Yes_, Celebrian replied.

_Let Elrond take him to his father. I must see Aradess. Now._


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

"Lord Elrond?" Legolas' voice seemed to be the only sound in all of Imladris as they wove through the halls.

"Yes?" Elrond paused and turned to face him.

Legolas stared at the floor as he gathered his words. The colour that had risen in him from his earlier tears started to fade. Now he was turning pale, wilting under the weight of his armour and weapons, flinching at what effort it took to lift his head.

"Has any word been sent to my father's kingdom? Or has anything come from there?"

"No," Elrond replied. "We wanted to wait until you knew. And I'm afraid we have no knowledge about what happened. Your father has hardly been conscious enough to tell us. If there is anything the Kingdom of Mirkwood needs when you get home, Prince Legolas, Imladris will answer your call."

Legolas nodded, but could not manage much more after his display of princely duty. As Elrond continued on, he kept glancing back over his shoulder to make sure Legolas had not collapsed some paces behind.

"I must ask you to prepare yourself," Elrond said. "If you have never seen you father's scars, they are a disturbing sight, but they are quite healed. His only injuries are to his hands."

"I never have," Legolas said.

On his next backward glance, Elrond found that Legolas had stopped in his tracks.

"I can't," Legolas said, his blue eyes wide. "I'm not… I can't see my father like that. I can't—!"

Elrond strode back down the hall and took Legolas' shaking hands in his. "Legolas, I cannot tell you that this will not be difficult. Your father is improving, but I cannot say what effect all of this will have on him."

"This will kill him," Legolas said. "He won't go on without my mother, Lord Elrond."

Elrond was grateful that Legolas would not look at him, would not see the pain in his face to think that Legolas thought so little of himself. "He will go on for _you_, Legolas. You are his son. You are his only hope in recovery."

"So if he dies it will be because I was not enough?"

Elrond put his arms around Legolas in a fierce embrace. Even through his layers of weapons and armour, Elrond could feel what exertion it took for Legolas just to stand there. All the muscles in his back bristled and twitched, his chest heaved with empty breaths, his heart palpitated.

"Legolas." Elrond laid one hand on the back of the prince's head, though Legolas was taller than him. In this, Legolas was only a child who needed comforting.

"My mother is dead." Legolas' voice was thin and strained.

"Yes."

"My father is dying."

"Without you, he certainly will not survive."

Legolas was still and silent for a long time. He did not pull away from what comfort Elrond offered.

"I will help you," Elrond said. "I know you can be strong enough for this."

Legolas nodded against Elrond's shoulder and finally pulled away. He stayed in step for what remained of the journey, pausing for only a moment before he stepped into his father's sickroom.

Elrond caught Legolas' arm when the prince whipped back around at the sight of the scarred and mutilated creature in the bed. Between Elrond and his own hand braced against the doorframe, Legolas just barely kept himself upright. His eyes were huge, his mouth caught open in silent horror.

"I know," Elrond said. "But it's only his hands, Legolas. The rest are ancient, healed long ago."

"I didn't know it was so…" Legolas looked back over his shoulder, but after one glance, he spun back.

"Now you do. Are you ready?"

Legolas appeared to be shrinking as his burdens became more and more. He took a deep, shaky breath and turned towards his father. Crossing to the far side of the bed—Thranduil's less scarred side—Legolas sat down and gazed at his father's face.

"Can I touch him?" Now that he was off his feet, Legolas crumbled where he sat.

"Very gently." Elrond took a few steps into the room, but no closer.

For a long moment, Legolas did not move. Then, slowly, he reached over his shoulder and unfastened the leather straps that held his sword and his bow behind him. He took off his knife belt and lay all in the corner beside him. Slow fingers undid the clasps of his armour, peeled it off his body. None of it could protect him now, not from this. In a rumpled tunic and muddied doeskin breeches, the prince of Mirkwood leaned back in his chair and gingerly took his father's hand.

* * *

Galadriel ran her fingers through Aradess' red hair, stroked her thumb against her temple. She released a heavy exhale, which Celebrian knew to be one of the few signs of her mother's anger.

"Show me," Galadriel said.

Celebrian drew the shroud back from Aradess' body to reveal the stab wound in her side.

One hand still in Aradess' hair, Galadriel traced her finger along the knife's mark and recoiled as if it had struck her too. She withdrew and Celebrian draped the shroud back over Aradess. Galadriel pulled the green leaf pendant from where it had caught under the edge of cloth and righted it reverently over Aradess' heart.

"You've no knowledge of what happened?" Galadriel asked.

"None. Thranduil was in such a state when he arrived. He only said that he could not remember and he hasn't been conscious since then."

"And Aradess?"

"She was already dead," Celebrian said, her voice straining with the grief still so near to her. "I believe she had been dead for some time."

Galadriel looked up at that. The faraway stars that usually filled her gaze were dimmed; she was entirely taken by what was occurring now before her, no distractions of the greater world or the future were equal to this moment.

"He was so stricken," Celebrian continued. "I think it was only his desperate hope that she might be saved that gave him the strength to come this far, to overcome his own injuries."

"How is he?"

"Improving, but Elrond does not have high hopes."

"No," Galadriel said—a statement, not a question.

"You don't believe having Legolas here will help?"

"Thranduil may pass before he even knows his son has come to his side."

"So this is it? The most powerful beings in Elvendom surround him only to watch him fade?" Celebrian realized how tightly she held her fists, how she had narrowed her gaze at not only her mother, but one of the most revered beings on earth.

"We are not gods, iell-nín," Galadriel said.

With that old endearment, Celebrian knew that her fears and anger were for someone centuries younger than herself. Still, her wisdom was a rock out of arm's reach in the middle of the sea, and she was still tossed in the frantic water.

"In the end, there are precious few things we truly control." Galadriel's focus was drawn back to where her hand lay on Aradess' chest. "Now, you must leave us, Celebrian."

Celebrian left without a word. It was several steps before she released her fists and shook out her hands. The days that Thranduil still lived were meant to bring more hope, but now Celebrian felt as if all of it had been dashed. No one around her seemed to believe in his recuperation, no one believed that his love for his son could save him. After Legolas' display of grief at his mother's side, Celebrian could only imagine how he was dealing with the sight of his father. Had they truly only summoned him so he could watch his father die? Was that any better than arriving to find him already gone? Celebrian felt strangely sundered from Legolas: despite her vast experiences, she had never mourned a parent. She trusted that Elrond would comfort him, would share what wisdom he could.

Though she had hoped to encounter one of her children, Celebrian found no one and so she wandered back towards the study for lack of anywhere else to go. Her heart had grown so heavy again that she felt weak to bear it. But before she took a seat by the fire, she saw her father standing out on the balcony.

"Ada," she said as she came up behind him.

Celeborn offered her a smile, laid his hands on her shoulders and kissed her brow. At the sight of her clutching her shawl so tightly around herself, he took off his cloak and laid it over her shoulders. He wrapped one arm around her and they stood together in silence gazing out at the valley.

"Your mother heard you crying in the night in Lothlorien," Celeborn said. "When your message came, we knew it must have been something very grave."

"I felt it, death coming towards us." Celebrian dropped her head against his shoulder. "And then the Black Breath… what it did to Arwen and to Elrond..."

"What it did to you," Celeborn said. He tightened his embrace. "But your light is coming back."

Celebrian put her arms around her father. "Do you think he will die, Ada?"

"I cannot say," Celeborn replied. "I hope not."

"How was Legolas on the journey here?"

"He was very quiet. There were whispers of some violence in the north, nothing specific. But that drove him on."

"Thranduil rode all the way here looking for help for Aradess, but she was already dead. He couldn't face it. He was delirious with grief, Ada, just at the thought."

"Our children give us strength we could never imagine ourselves capable of, elanor-nín. Do not give up hope."

Celebrian held her father as she had when she was young. She leaned on him, shed tears against him, and prayed that all children would know such never-ending comfort in their fathers' arms.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

Arwen tapped on the doorframe with one finger before entering. She had a tray of food in one hand, a bottle of wine in the other, and a smile on her face that she had rehearsed in the mirror.

"I brought you something in case you were hungry," she said, stepping into the room. Legolas still did not take notice of her, or was ignoring her. "If you don't horde a little something for yourself, Elrohir will eat everything."

Legolas slouched back in his chair, as pale and unmoving as marble in the moonlight.

Arwen set the tray and the bottle on the worktable. "If you wanted to rest, Legolas, I could stay here for awhile."

"No. Thank you." His voice was little more than a whisper, but still it sounded like it tore through his throat.

Though she knew this room and the vigil were for Legolas now, Arwen could not undo the habits of the past several days. From across the room, she examined Thranduil's body; watched his breathing, studied his wounded hand for any sign of returning darkness. All was well—well enough.

Arwen tipped some drops of athelas oil and water into the well of the small aroma lamp on the end of the worktable and lit the candle. She looked about the room for any other chore, any excuse to stay. She went to the head of the bed and laid a hand on Thranduil's forehead. She reached down to his wrist and measured his pulse.

"Good," she said, almost believing the optimism she had forced into her voice. When she looked at Legolas, she found him staring at her. He looked centuries too old, lines and shadows around his eyes, around the grim line of his mouth. He was haggard and disheveled from the journey, from what he had found at his destination.

"I cannot tell whether I want to weep, be sick, or kill something," he said, and indeed all those impulses seemed at war in his features. Wan but angry, exhausted but tense.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Could you help me up?"

Arwen circled the bed and took Legolas' hands. Before he was even halfway to his feet, almost all of his weight was on her, and his body was stiff and slow. Arwen braced herself as he coaxed every muscle to stretch and hold him upright. He was so tall—even taller than her brothers—but her strength was enough to support him.

In several staggered and graceless steps, Legolas made his way to the worktable and the tray of food. Arwen kept on hand on his back, but he did not ask for any more assistance. He tore a corner off a piece of lembas and offered the rest of it to her. Arwen took a tiny piece and they both ate. Despite the miniscule amount, it seemed to take Legolas almost a heroic amount of effort to swallow.

Arwen had only met Legolas on formal occasions, and very few of them. But she had had her hands on his mother's body, on his father's bloody hands. Any notion of unfamiliarity with him seemed a distant memory now. Still, she knew nothing of him, nothing of what might lift his spirits; she could not convince herself that now was the time to ask questions.

His shoulders heaved beneath her hand and Arwen had a bowl under his chin in an instant. He covered his mouth with his hand, tears pouring down his face, and shook his head.

"That's all right, Legolas," she said, rubbing his back. His blonde hair was speckled with dirt, every braid half-undone. He boots and breeches were muddy, his tunic stained with sweat. "I could find you some clean clothes."

He nodded.

"If you would come with me for a little while, Legolas, I think I could help you," Arwen said. "Your father will still be here when we get back."

Legolas nodded again and let himself be steered out of the room. The heavy shadows in the waning moonlight did not matter; Arwen knew precisely where she was going, every staircase, every corner. They wound down and down the steps—slowly, and only slower the longer they went on. Legolas could barely lift his legs, and even his Elven eyes seemed blind in the dark. They stole across the rocky shore along the Bruinen and into the base of the cliffs of Imladris.

"Where…" Legolas cut off his own question as they moved through the stone corridors, lit well with lamps. The walls glistened and the air grew heavier with heat and steam. Soon they came to the hot spring pool. An exquisite hall had been made of the waters. Stone pillars engraved with images of Valinor, the pale walls reflecting the warm lamplight and the gently rippling water.

Legolas limped over to one of the benches and started to tear off his boots and looked quite faint after the first one. Arwen knelt in front of him and pulled off the other one. She reached for the hem of his tunic and he raised his arms with a grimace. Gently, she pulled the shirt over his head. She offered her hands so he could stand back up and take care of the breeches himself.

Arwen stared resolutely at the wall until she heard the splash of water. When she turned around, he was only pale shoulders and a head of golden hair over the edge of the pool. After a moment, he sank a little deeper.

"Is that a little better?" Arwen took off her slippers and approached the water.

"A little," he replied with a sigh.

Arwen hiked up the hem of her skirt to above her knees and crouched down behind him. She slid each leg into the water on either side of him. She laid one hand against his hair and though he had not even opened his eyes from his reverie as she took her seat, she stopped. "May I?"

He nodded.

With nimble fingers, Arwen undid his braids, trying to be gentle with the knots. Even though his hair was dirty, when it caught the firelight, it was the most brilliant gold. His father's blonde, but with the warmth of his mother's auburn. Arwen twisted his loose hair over his shoulder so the ends fell in the water. She noticed the twin scars over his shoulders.

Without warning, Legolas submerged himself. The water flooded up where Arwen sat and soaked her skirts through, but she could say nothing when Legolas came up again with the years and exhaustion gone from his face. He pressed his hands over his hair and wrung out the ends.

Arwen upended a bottle of oil onto the palm of one hand and massaged her fingers through his hair.

"Thank you," Legolas said, even his voice purified by the water.

"It's only rose oil," she said.

"No, for… For everything. For what your family has done."

"You're welcome."

Legolas caught her hand as she combed her fingers through his hair. "I should have been with them."

"If you had been injured, or worse, then there would have only been more grief."

"Physical pain I understand," Legolas said. "This… I don't know how to feel this."

"Whatever you need, Legolas, I hope you won't hesitate to ask." Arwen took her hands of out his hair and rubbed the excess oil into her palms.

Legolas submerged again, and this time he kicked himself off of the wall and swam halfway up the length of the pool. He broke the surface with a great splash and wiped the water from his face. A soft sob echoed through the room.

Arwen watched him silently, as if he were some creature in a story that should not be disturbed lest it disappear. He played his fingers against the surface of the water, tracing ripples around and through each other. He stretched, massaged the back of his neck and his shoulders. A few of his breaths caught loudly in his throat.

After a long while, Legolas swam back to her. He wrapped his hands around her calves and rose up out of the water to kiss her on the cheek.

"I need to not feel this," Legolas said as he pulled away. His pale face was marked with tears, his blue eyes bright and shimmering. "Just for a minute. Just so I can… breathe."

Arwen nodded though she did not yet know what she was going to do. She could not break a promise she had made only minutes ago, but the harder her heart hammered, the thinner her resolve became. She leaned down and wiped away his tears with her thumbs. Cupping his face, she kissed him, softly, fully. His lips were warm and damp as they moved over hers, with the occasional salty taste of tears. It was he who pulled away, drawing a huge and shaky breath. With each one, he seemed to grow steadier, stronger.

"I'll be back with clean clothes for you," she said.

Legolas reverently dipped his head.

She stood up, her skirts dripping, and went back out into the night.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

"Did you ever imagine a closer alliance with Mirkwood?" Galadriel asked as she and Elrond stood in companionable silence on opposite ends of his study.

He came to join her at the window and saw Arwen and Legolas hand-in-hand as they walked over the rocks. Elrond silently praised his daughter for her thought to take Legolas to the springs; he could only wonder and marvel at how she had convinced him to leave his father's side.

"I am certain it's only sisterly concern," Elrond said. "Arwen has truly shown her strength these past few days. She's worried about Legolas since the first day. And what she did for Thranduil may have saved his life."

Elrond looked over at Galadriel and saw a rare smile of pride on her face. Soon it faded, taken over again by grave contemplation.

"It was not Nazgûl that attacked them. Only a legion of orcs led by their own kind," Galadriel said.

"Then how could Thranduil be so affected?"

"The weapon was edged with poison created from some property of the wraiths. I know not how."

"I have never heard of such a thing."

"Nor I." Galadriel took a sip from the wine glass she balanced between her hands.

The relief that it was not the return of Nazgûl that had wrought this tragedy was overwhelmed by the knowledge that orcs could wield the power of wraiths in their hands. The devastation dealt by only nine had been anguish enough—now there could be hundreds, thousands.

"How do you know this?" Elrond asked.

"I saw through Aradess," Galadriel said. She took another sip.

"You know what happened that day in Mirkwood?"

"The truth belongs to Thranduil, if he survives, and Legolas."

They lapsed into another silence. Minutes later, they saw Arwen cross back over the rocky bank of the Bruinen by herself. Elrond's reflex was to go and meet her, but he stopped himself. She had proven her wisdom more than once and did not need her father's supervision.

"This has taken a toll on Celebrian," Galadriel said softly.

"Her grief is for both the dead and the living," Elrond replied. He had visited her in their chambers while she was lying down, but she had been too deep in her rest to talk. "This has all laid heavily on her pure heart."

"You have taken little rest for yourself, Elrond," Galadriel said, turning her gaze to him. "Let me take your watch."

Elrond could not say if it was truly his exhaustion or the power of Galadriel's suggestions that compelled him to bed. Celebrian was still where she had been hours ago, curled up in her blankets, her hair corded over one shoulder. He lay down beside her and wrapped his arms around her. She twined her fingers through his and sighed.

"How is my lady this winter evening?" he whispered against her ear.

"Cold," she replied.

He held her tighter.

* * *

Freshly washed and dressed, Legolas felt invigorated enough to sit up at his father's bedside for the whole of the next day. He ate a little and talked with the visitors who came through—Elrond, who inspected his father, and Celebrian, Elladen, and Arwen, who inspected Legolas himself. But most of Legolas' words were for his father when they were finally alone, as the sun began to fall.

"Ada, I'm begging you… please open your eyes. I know it hurts with Naneth… dead… but I can't do this. Ada, I'm not strong enough to do this. You raised me to be harder than that, I know. I'm sorry. But I can't… I can't lose my family and go back to Mirkwood. Your people will be without a king, Ada. I've never felt less of a prince than now. So if you don't wake up for me, wake up for them."

Whenever Legolas thought himself past tears he felt his eyes begin to burn again. He dashed them away with one hand, resolved not to have his father wake up to find him crying.

"Ada… Aran-nín… please. Open your eyes."

Legolas made his pleas hour after hour into the night. As the darkness drew on, Legolas' own words took insidious root in his heart. If his father was not going to wake up, Legolas was going to run. Away from Elrond and Celebrian and their parental protectiveness, away from Galadriel, who could see into the darkest parts of him, away from Arwen's kindness. He could not look into another pitying face, could not stand the close, cloying air of the sickroom for another day.

The notion of sitting there any longer became a colossal task. Legolas twitched and writhed in that chair as if it were an instrument of torture, but he never let go of his father's hand. His father's cold, scarred hand.

"_I' maer gwaew, i' forn gwaew_," Legolas sang softly. The words conjured a vision of his mother sitting with him when he was small, or comforting him even when he was grown, and his voice broke. "_Lind __trî eryn. I' maer êl, i' forn êl, __lind __trî menel. Linnon—_"

His father's brow creased. His hand twitched hard to grasp Legolas' own.

"Ada!" Legolas moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He gathered his father's hand in both of his and held it to his heart.

Thranduil drew a heavy breath and grimaced in pain. "Aradess…"

"It's me, Ada. Come back."

Both eyes opened, but only one was the blue Legolas knew. The other was a blind milky orb glowing in the burnt flesh of the left side of his father's face.

"Legolas?"

Legolas instantly broke his own vow and started to cry. He felt his heart shudder back to life beneath his and his father's gathered hands.

"You must go," Thranduil said. His urgency seemed almost enough to make him faint. He opened his hand against Legolas' chest and pushed him away. "Run, Legolas… they're coming!"

Legolas held tight to his father's hand. "We're in Imladris, Ada. You're safe now. Lord Elrond!"

Thranduil cried out and twisted in pain on the bed, each collection of scars catching the sliver of moonlight shining through the window. Dragon-fire, the battlefield, morgul blades.

As Elrond swept through the door, he grabbed something from the worktable and did not miss a step rushing over to the bed. Whatever was in the vial, he tipped it down Thranduil's throat in three doses. Now Thranduil gripped Legolas' hand as if he were falling and his eyes drew closed again.

"No!" Legolas cried.

"It's all right," Elrond said. "It was just for the pain."

It was the longest moment Legolas had known this whole restless night before Thranduil opened his eyes again.

"Thranduil, you came to Imladris, do you remember?" Elrond asked gently.

"My wife… where is she?"

Elrond laid a hand on Legolas' shoulder as if in apology for saying it so frankly. "Aradess is dead, Thranduil. I'm so sorry."

"No!" Thranduil writhed as the words worked through his mind to his heart.

"There was an attack in Mirkwood and you were both severely injured—"

"Why save my life if you could not save hers!" Thranduil's bandaged hand weakly grabbed at Elrond's collar. "It cannot be…"

"Thranduil, Legolas is—"

Legolas felt the weight of his father's singular gaze land on him, burning with anger, brimming with tears.

"Get out," Thranduil said. "Get out!"

Elrond squeezed Legolas' shoulder and nodded for him to obey.

His father's screams followed Legolas out of the room, echoed in his heart as he made his way to the stables.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

"How could you let my son see me like this!" Thranduil hissed. He closed his eyes and tried to summon the magic buried beneath days of darkness and suffering. Immaculate flesh flickered over the burns, the scars, but vanished instantly. He tried again, but this time the glamour faded not just to age-old scars. His body was covered in blood as if the injuries had just been made. The burns wept gore and melted flesh, the slash from Dagorlad that circled his back gushed, split open over tissue and bone.

Thranduil screamed with the pain of every injury in his thousands of years. Elrond pressed down on the open wound from instinct alone; he knew naught but horror to see so much blood so suddenly.

A moment later the blood was gone, the wounds healed over. The flood of red that had stained Thranduil's skin disappeared, an illusion, the glamour's backlash.

"Stop," Elrond said, still clutching Thranduil's side, his voice small with fear.

Whether by exhaustion or by his own will, Thranduil sank heavy and still into the bed.

"I heard her voice," Thanduil said. "I heard her singing."

"A dream," Elrond said. He collected his still-shaking hands into his lap.

"What did you do to me that you could not do for her?" Thranduil's grief turned to rage. His right eye shed tears, but his voice came out hotly forged from the fire inside him.

"Thranduil, she was already dead. You were half-mad with grief and pain," Elrond said. "If there was anything—_anything_—I could have done, I would have. We summoned Legolas as soon as we could."

"How merciful Lord Elrond is to expose my son to this suffering." Thranduil moved his gaze to the window. "You have given him hope where there is none."

"Don't say that. Your injuries are—"

"Aradess is dead," Thranduil said, the fire in his voice extinguished. "My wife is dead. Murdered. And I did nothing. I don't even remember…"

"Thranduil." Galadriel's deep voice tolled like a bell, the sound resonating through any heart that heard her.

Thranduil winced and paled. He felt as if he were one sensation away from death as his weak heart shuddered in his breast. He could not escape her when she circled to the far side of the bed and filled the vision of his functioning eye. She clasped his forearm like a comrade on the battlefield.

"If you are here to tell me her death is part of a grand cosmic design, you can leave now." Cold tingled up his arm, chilling down to his blood. Thranduil saw Aradess lying on a stone catafalque, shrouded up to her throat in pale linen. Her flesh was grey, even her hair was less vivid than it had been in life. But her emerald pendant glittered, small and shining.

"I would say no such thing," Galadriel said. "This was senseless violence, a return to the darkest of days. Aradess is among the first victims of a coming war, Thranduil. But she was also our first warrior."

Thranduil grasped Galadriel's arm and the vision flooded into him.

* * *

_Aradess stared up from where she lay on the ground, winded and bruised from the blunt strike to her abdomen. The night was bright with the stars they had come to worship, but the pure light faded behind the smoke and the screams_

_An orc came to stand by her feet, sniffing the air—relishing the reek of death and blood, perhaps. Aradess swept her legs under it to knock it to the ground. She wrestled on top of it, her ankles pinning its wrists, her knees its shoulders. Fighting its sword from its hand, she deftly, brutally stabbed the blade through its ribs to into its heart._

_She looked up at the deadly swirls of black and white across the field. Orcs killed without quarter, Elves fought for weapons to defend themselves._

_Aradess tore out the sword from her victim and hamstrung an orc running past her. It dropped to its knees with a howl and she cut of its head, its black blood spraying across her white clothes. She pulled the bow from its grip and looked about her._

"_Thorod!" _

_Free from combat for the moment, the captain of the royal guard sprinted toward her. He caught the bow she threw to him and came up to collect the arrows from the quiver across the dead orc's back._

"_Are you all right, my lady?" Thorod was stained from heel to crown in mud and blood, his green eyes huge and shining in his face. Aradess could not tell if he was wounded, but he seemed to be standing well enough._

_She nodded and stood up, sword in hand. "Where is he?"_

_She searched the chaotic melee. "Search to the north. I'll go south."_

"_I can't leave you, my lady. I'm sworn to protect the crown."_

"_You are sworn to obey!" Aradess shouted at him. "Go!"_

_She took off in her intended direction before Thorod could voice further dissent. Though it slowed her search, she cut down any enemies she could; few of her subjects, her friends had such a chance to exact justice on their attackers. So much screaming, so many pale bodies writhing in pain in the mud, so many completely still. If she were not so driven to attack, to see every drop of orc blood spilled, she would have collapsed with fear._

_She did not want to call his name, did not want him to identify himself if he was still standing. If…_

_A huge shadow moved against the treeline, exposing the hem of a white robe, the edges of a tall body, cascade of pale blonde hair. _

_Aradess sprinted for them, winding the sword behind her for a powerful strike. She swung up along the large orc's side and severed its right arm at the shoulder. It roared and wildly wheeled around. Without hesitating, Aradess leapt high and kicked it across the face. It dropped to its knees and remaining hand and Aradess thrust her sword down through the centre of it with a feral scream._

_Thranduil stood against a tree, a knife impaling his left hand. His arm was already stained with so much blood. He hung heavy and lifeless._

_Aradess cupped one hand under his chin and lifted his face. "Thranduil…" _

_She pressed her ear to his chest, the weak, lagging beat of his heart echoing in her head like blasts. Rising up on her toes, she reached for the knife in his hand. The first fingertip that touched it burned on contact and searing pain roared through her veins. She examined her finger and for a moment it was spiderwebbed with dark blue veins. The poison reached down beneath her wedding band then dissipated. That was after only one second of contact. How long had Thranduil been here?_

_The screams from the field behind her went quiet as her mind raced. Her people were dying. But her husband…_

"_Thranduil. Thranduil, look at me," she said, taking his face in her hand again. There was not the slightest stirring in his features. Aradess kissed him, felt how cold he was becoming._

_With a rallying cry, Aradess grabbed the knife hilt again and tried to pull it out. The last thing she heard was a guttural, scraping voice she thought the world would never hear again. The last thing she saw, a shadow deeper and darker than anything she had ever known._

"_Got 'em both," a deep voice said. _

"_Guess the blades work."_

_Aradess opened her eyes just enough to see several boots standing around her in the mud. She discreetly cast around herself for the sword she'd had._

"_Master won't be happy unless we got the princeling too."_

Legolas! _They would not find him here, but anyone willing to launch such a savage attack would not stop before they had hunted down the last of their quarry._

"_Search the bodies. If you find him, bring him here. We'll have him begging for death if he ain't dead already. Kill the wounded. Master wants these people broken before he moves in."_

_It took all of her strength for Aradess to keep herself still. Let them think she was dead. Let them walk away. She no longer cared if she was unarmed—she would kill them all with her bare hands if she had to._

_She watched the boots stomp away. She was trembling with rage. Those second she waited for them to turn from her felt longer than a thousand years. Aradess craned her head to see their positions as the orcs walked back towards the massacre. Not one looked back at her._

_She saw the sword just a short reach away from her outstretched left hand. She picked it up, gathered her limbs under her into a crouch, and sprang to attack._

_She ran the first one through and took the knife from its belt to slash its throat before it could cry out. She threw the knife to strike down the next one in the temple. She was almost upon the killing field and knew she would be spotted. There were seven orcs standing._

_Aradess leapt onto the back of one, seized its chin and forehead, and snapped its neck, somersaulting off as it fell forward. An arrow whistled past her ear as she came up to her knees. Three orcs charged towards her. She tore a broken lantern post and poised it as a spear. _

_The orc on her left was quickest to reach her. She blocked his sword and the blade stuck in the wood. She wrenched the sword out of its hand as she swung the post to strike the next orc across the face. This one wore a helmet and only staggered from the blow, but it was enough time to turn back to the now-unarmed orc. She swung the post back, dropped to one knee, and rammed the broken end through the top of the orc's throat. _

_Aradess had not taken up arms in true combat in centuries, but her instincts were still precise and deadly, sharpened even further when she thought of these creatures hunting down her son. She remained hopeful that they had mistaken Thranduil for dead as they had her; she tried not to think anymore about that terrible blade and whatever poison or dark work was in her husband's blood._

_She took out the next two orcs and picked up a bow and single arrow to shoot down another. She dropped the weapon and carried on. Only her singular focus kept her from feeling disturbed as she jumped over the bloodied Elven bodies. She chased her quarry towards the horizon paling with the first light of dawn._

_The terrible terrain emboldened one of the orcs to turn and charge her. It tackled her to the ground and as she fought she felt her limbs hitting the bodies around her. For all her thrashing, she did not have the weight to overthrow it. Hands closed around her throat and all the bulk of the orc's misshapen body crushed down on her windpipe. She clawed, she kicked, she choked out curses._

_An Elf appeared over the orc's shoulder and drove a knife into the orc's back over and over again, half-screaming, half-laughing in her brutal vengeance. The orc dropped heavily onto Aradess, still and bleeding, driving out the last of her breath._

_Aradess' rescuer hauled the body off of her and then collapsed herself. A huge wound gaped across her hips and a broken arrow shaft stuck out from beneath her ribs._

"_Rîs-nín…" the woman muttered as she fell back. She held up the Elven knife dripping with dark blood. "A-acharn…"_

_Aradess accepted the knife. "Acharn."_

_The woman deserved more than to bleed to death next to the abomination she had cut down. More that to watch her queen walk away from her. But Aradess had no choice._

_Aradess sprinted faster as the bodies grew thinner on the ground. The two remaining orcs had gained much ground while she had grappled with their brother. She stopped and took steady aim at the farthest one, and threw the Elven knife. It spun through the air and Aradess swore that if no divine being watching over her people guided her blade to its mark, she would lose her faith altogether._

_The orc arched as the knife lodged into its spine, staggered its last steps, and fell. The final orc, following several yards behind, stopped to watch its last comrade die. It just stood there as Aradess kept sprinting toward it. She watched its shoulders bristle, watched it slowly turn its head. All of its movements were so slow that the twitch of its arm seemed lightning fast by comparison. _

_Aradess had nearly come to a halt before she realized she had stopped running at all. She glared down at her legs to command them to move and saw the knife—so small it was little more than a dart—deep in her stomach. A halo of blood began to seep around it._

_The orc was grinning when she looked up at it. She smirked in return. The immortal grace within her powered her past her own pain. Aradess charged at her foe. She slid through the wide stance of its legs, intent on retrieving the knife from the body several steps away. The orc caught the edge of her gown and yanked her back to the ground as she was rising to her feet. One heavy boot came down hard on her stomach, on the hilt of the knife in her stomach. She did not know if she screamed; she blacked out for what felt like ages but could only have been seconds as she found the orc staring down at her. She raised both arms above her head and crashed her joined hands against the orc's knee with all her strength. It buckled and she seized its ankle to unbalance it completely. The orc fell to the ground wildly flailing its limbs. Aradess wrestled on top of it, but only had the advantage of surprise for a few moments. The orc bent its legs against her body and threw her over to land hard on her back. _

_She had no weapon, her strength was waning fast. She was very aware of the life draining out of her now, though she felt little pain through her desperation to kill this thing. This was how people died. She imagined Legolas smiling as he turned back for one last wave to his parents as he left for Lorien days before. She imagined Thranduil appearing behind her in the looking glass as they prepared for the festival only a few hours ago. He had placed the ornate hair pin she now wore into her auburn braids, her own star to glitter on earth while all the Elves turned their faces to the sky. _

_As the orc maneuvered to get on top of her again, Aradess pulled the large silver pin from the back of her head and as the orc reached its hands for her throat, she thrust the pin deep into its neck, sawing it through muscles and veins and flesh. The orc sputtered several breaths. Its hands went to its own throat, weakly grabbing at Aradess' hands, but she did not stop. She drew more and more blood until the orc went limp and fell off of her. _

_The field was silent then but for Aradess' own thin breaths. No more screams, no more pain. She had taken vengeance for her people and soon she would greet them again in paradise. She could forget the twisted faces she had seen in the mud, in the fighting. She would miss Legolas. She held onto the memory of kissing his brow before he had left, the warmth and smell of his hair in the sunlight. Her son, her true immortality. _

"_Aradess!"_

_Thranduil was alive. Aradess felt herself shiver with relief… with the cold that had come over her… with the effort it took to breathe. But when it came, her last breath was easy, heavy. Her heart was full of peace to think of her husband and her son in this, the last moment of her eternal life._


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

Crouching in the back of his horse's stall, Legolas could not get to his feet fast enough to avoid whoever it was running into the stable. He leaned back into the shadows and hoped that whoever it was would pass, but it appeared that the world had no care for even his smallest wishes.

"There you are." The dark-haired Elf peered from over the stall door—Elladen or Elrohir, Legolas could not tell. They shared a stare for a long moment, and the son of Elrond grew so uneasy in the silence that Legolas decided he had to be Elrohir, the one member of the family he had not yet seen. Elrohir glanced back to the door he had come through, scrubbing Legolas' stallion's nose while the horse stood placidly.

"What are you doing down there?" Elrohir asked overly casually, his voice high with affected familiarity.

Legolas lifted his face out of his hands and showed Elrohir his bloody nose.

"What happened!" Elrohir's genuine shock was more inviting that his intense friendliness.

"Thumped by this no-good, high-minded beast," Legolas replied.

The horse did not dignify his master's complaint with even so much as a backward glance.

Elrohir fought a smile and patted the stallion's head. "Well done, you."

"Hey!"

"Come on," Elrohir said, stepping back to open the stall door. "Everyone's been sent to look for you."

Legolas stood up. The once-overpowering urge to run had been knocked out of him and he did not have the will to be disobedient.

"You were the only one who thought I would make good my escape?" Legolas asked.

"People have far too high opinions of the sons of kings and lords," Elrohir replied. "But we're as desperate to make a break for freedom as anyone else."

"You speak from experience."

"I've kicked off my share of search parties," Elrohir said. He stood in the middle of the wide aisle that divided the stalls. He glanced at the open stable doors, but did not move.

"Are you not here to take me back?"

Elrohir sighed. "That part of the order was rather vague. As far as I know, I'm only supposed to find you and make sure you're all right."

Legolas touched his nose again and grimaced. Not broken, but certainly bruised and still stinging of his horse's betrayal.

"So, what can I offer you to make you feel better? A ride is out of the question, but I could find you something to hit, or something to break, or something to drink—"

"A drink," Legolas agreed, quickly enough to receive a discerning arch of an eyebrow in reply. "Please."

"A drink it is," Elrohir said. He led the way to the door. The wind carried all the voices calling for Legolas in towards them. "If you like, we can take the long way around."

Thankfully, Elrohir appeared to have finally reached a degree of comfort that allowed him to stay silent on their journey. They climbed rocks, wove through trees, at times it seemed they had climbed out of the valley entirely and the whole expanse of Imladris lay glittering before them in the dark. Legolas was almost surprised that they did not climb a rope of bedsheets to get into Elrohir's chambers. They did take the narrow spiral staircase for the servants, though, rather than ascend to any of the main halls.

The room was wide, full of books and artifacts, not unlike Lord Elrond's study, if a little less orderly. On either side of the sitting room, doors were open to identical bedchambers. It seemed the twin brothers could not bear to be far from each other even hundreds of years on.

"Forgive my brother his eccentricities," Elrohir said as he flipped aside several books to get to a small wooden cabinet tucked in the deep windowsill. He withdrew a squat, dark bottle and two pewter goblets, and had to clear the table of papers before he could set them out.

"I left a watermark on one once and he acted like I'd set his whole collection on fire." Elrohir pulled the cork out with his teeth and spit it across the room. He poured both glasses full of the thick liquid and passed a cup to Legolas.

"It's Dwarvish. Very old, very strong. I imagine I could be convinced to live in a hole in the ground too if I were drunk enough on this."

Legolas turned his head at the smell alone and fortified himself for his first sip. "To your good health."

They both drank; Elrohir's sharp exhale was only a more practiced iteration of Legolas' burning cough. As they recovered, Elrohir settled against the windowsill and Legolas leaned against the edge of the table.

"To your mother," Elrohir said, raising his cup.

Legolas sealed his cracking heart by draining the rest of his drink. He held out his cup for more, though he was left breathless by what he had already consumed.

"What are you doing?" came a reproachful voice from the doorway. Elladen stood with his arms rigid at his sides and Legolas wondered at how he could have failed to tell the two apart, the minister and the trickster.

"I'm sorry, Prince Legolas, my brother should have taken you back to the hall. Your father—"

"Since he commanded me to go, I doubt it was he who gave any order for me to return," Legolas said, his voice singed with both the liquor and his anger.

Whatever authority Elladen had built himself up with disappeared. He crossed the room to stand beside his brother, took his cup, and sipped with a grimace.

"Did he really?" Elrohir asked.

Legolas nodded. "He's been unconscious for, what, a week? But he rallied to order me out of his sight. Let it not be said that King Thranduil does not have his causes. He'll scream you out of a room if it's the last thing he ever does."

"He had terrible dreams those first few days. Maybe…" But not even Elladen could convince himself of any excuse as to why Thranduil would do such a thing.

"What were you going to do? If you made it out?" Elrohir asked, taking his drink back from his brother.

"Leaving seemed like a whole enough plan." Legolas glanced down at his cup and found it half empty without realizing he had taken a drink.

"But you're the heir to—"

"Elladen," Elrohir said, elbowing his brother. He passed the cup and Elladen silenced himself with a sip.

"All I prayed for was for my father to wake up, but he took one look at me and decided he didn't want to see me," Legolas said, his eyes burning. "For a second… for _one_ second, I wished that he had died and my mother had lived. And now if… I'd never forgive myself."

"You can't hold it against him, Legolas," Elladen said. "That darkness, it did terrible things to all of us. Even our mother. Even Arwen."

"What about Arwen?" she said, appearing in the doorway. "Is everyone out looking for someone who is stolen away in the halls of this very house?"

Legolas managed an apologetic look at her as she came up beside him.

"Have some pity, sister," Elrohir said. "Have a drink."

"You have no more glasses," Arwen said. Both cups were suddenly thrust within her reach. "Is this really making all of you feel better?"

"I don't know about better, but it's helping me feel less," Legolas said.

Arwen frowned, accepted his cup, and took a long drink. "I heard your father."

"I think every Elven ear within twenty miles heard him," Legolas said.

"I'm sorry. His injuries—"

"I'm sure all of your defenses are valid, but I can't hear them right now," Legolas said, looking into each face around him. "Let me have my anger for a little while before I go back to unimaginable heartbreak."

The children of Elrond and Celebrian exchanged loaded glances. Elrohir topped up their drinks and the cups silently went around the circle.

"Can we at least be maudlin somewhere a little better than this mess?" Arwen asked, gesturing at the table strewn with papers and inkwells, at the room cluttered with weapons and outerwear and books. "Are any of you still in any condition to climb to the roof?"

Elrohir led the way, with Legolas behind, each with a glass, then Arwen, then Elladen with the bottle. They sat between two peaks in the roof, gazing out at the view their vantage point afforded of the cliffs and even the plains above the valley.

Relieved of his cup by Arwen, Legolas lay back on the shingles and stared up at the stars. Shining orbs that held the memories of all creation, perhaps the only witnesses to his mother's death. Perhaps one was now the essence of Aradess herself. A few tears loosed down his cheeks.

"The sun," Arwen sighed at the sight of the glowing dawn on the horizon.

Legolas was content to lay staring at the small glimmer he had picked out as the newest soul in the sky, trying to feel its light like a touch on his hand, a kiss on his brow. But soon even the stars had faded, and the thought of the sun offered him no warmth. Legolas sat up and took the bottle from Elrohir rather than disturb Arwen's enchantment with the dawn. Between them they had left only a few sips, or one brave gulp.

"You're one of us now, Legolas," Elrohir said with a broad smile.

"Thank goodness. I needed a new brother," Elladen said.

Arwen laid her hand over Legolas'. "When we get down from this roof, you have the three of us. No matter what happens."

Legolas felt a smile tug at his lips, felt his eyes brim with his bottomless well of tears. He laced his fingers through Arwen's and the first rays of dawn broke over them, the children of Imladris and the Prince of Mirkwood.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

Elrond watched the rising sun, but felt nothing of its warmth while he stood out on the balcony to his study. Thranduil's despair, his tears and the wreckage of his kingly voice as he had commanded Elrond and Galadriel to leave, as he had cursed Elrond for ever saving his life even once, cursed Galadriel for laying her hands on his wife's body, was a catching as the aura of the Black Breath. There was no good way for these past days to have unfolded, but with Thranduil succumbing to his broken heart and Legolas sundered from his only living parent, Elrond could not help but feel that it had all gone awry. He could see only where his hand had changed the course for the worse.

Soft, slender arms wrapped around him, a long, warm body pressed against his back.

"My mother says Thranduil is doing very poorly," Celebrian said quietly.

Elrond twined his arms around hers. "I wonder if she should have kept the truth from him."

"His imaginings would have tormented him all the days of his life."

"What she showed him brought him no solace," Elrond said, seeing Thranduil's anguished face in his mind. Galadriel may have restored his glamour while he was under her magic, but the pain on his face was its own scar, one no amount of medicine or magic could heal.

Elrond turned around to face Celebrian. She looked better, some colour returned to her face, but still had a heavy shawl about her shoulders.

"I think Thranduil's days may be very few," he said. "He commanded Galadriel and I to leave."

"Still, we should look in on Legolas—"

"He sent Legolas away as well."

"Where is he?" Panic drained what little colour there was in Celebrian's face.

"He's with the children. I could hear them."

Celebrian braced a hand against his chest and wilted with relief. "What will we do if…"

"I don't know," Elrond said. "I want to say that he could stay here, but that is not up to me."

Celebrian shook her head, perhaps at the idea of turning out someone in need when Imladris had fostered so many. "He's so young, Elrond."

"I know." Elrond closed his hands over Celebrian's where it lay on his chest and kissed her forehead. He hoped she did not feel the hitch in his breath while he tried to hide his welling eyes. "Don't ever die."

Celebrian kissed his lips, loosing his tears down his face. She lingered close, cradling her other hand to the back of his neck, stroking his hair.

"I'll send for Legolas," she said when she finally pulled away from him.

"Give him a little while longer. He was in a state after Thranduil shouted at him."

"What will we do if Thranduil lives?" Celebrian said almost to herself. "Father and son sundered when they are each other's only comfort."

Celebrian returned inside before she could answer herself, if she had any answer at all. Elrond had no wisdom to offer. He turned back to face the valley, half light, half shadow under the rising sun.

"If you could, would you know the fate of your foster father?" Galadriel's voice came from the doorway after a mere moment of silence. She must have been waiting for Celebrian to leave.

Elrond was quite astounded by the question. "That is not something I have thought on in thousands of years."

"But you did ponder it once. Did it disturb you, not knowing?" Galadriel came up to the balustrade beside him.

The many memories of loss Elrond had been keeping at bay these dark few days shook in his mind like beasts in a cage. Old as it was, the memory Galadriel asked for was harmless now, but Elrond had to keep the others from escaping to run rampant on his resolve.

"It made me sad to think of him alone and despondent," Elrond replied. "If he lived on, I hope he found peace."

"If you could know his death was brave and that he thought of you in the end, would that be a mercy to your conscience?"

Even for Galadriel the questions were strange. Not questions or wisdom or morality or justice, truly a personal question for which she wanted a personal answer.

"It was so long before I even heard he had gone," Elrond said. "There was nothing I could do; it was not as if I could go after him with any hope of finding him. But I suppose that knowing for sure would have been a balm to me in darker time when I was given to thinking about it."

He watched Galadriel absorb his response, but her face was unreadable.

"If you're asking if I think you should show to Legolas what you showed to Thranduil, I don't have an answer for you. But it nearly… no, it _destroyed_ Thranduil. Would you be prepared to see that pain on Legolas' face?"

"I feel he should have the chance to know."

"Not all wisdom is worth having," Elrond said. "I don't think he cares how she died. I think he cares that she's dead, and there's nothing we can do to change what happened. None among us knows what it is to lose a mother. Our impositions of what Legolas _should_ do are founded on nothing."

"He must be prepared to take up his father's crown, Elrond. His people have been slaughtered. They cannot be left without a leader for long. This needs to be resolved quickly and someone restored to the throne of Mirkwood. It is the privilege to which they were born, a privilege that comes with high personal costs. If Thranduil is determined to die and join his wife, we should honour that. If Legolas must become king, we should prepare him."

Elrond remembered embracing Legolas, how small and powerless his trembling body felt. He wanted only to protect him, as he would his own child, but he could not deny that Galadriel's suggestion was protection of sorts that Legolas might learn to appreciate in his years of rule. For now, it would look like a cruelty for which Legolas might never forgive them.

* * *

Legolas, Arwen, Elladen, and Elrohir climbed down from the roof just in time to receive summons to Elrond's study. Technically the request was only for Legolas, but his new-sworn siblings followed. Arwen held his hand while Elladen and Elrohir placed themselves as a barrier between their father's messenger and Legolas. Despite the bright dawn, the day had turned cloudy and threatened a bitter winter rain.

"I'm sure it's only an explanation of how your father is coping now that he's awake," Arwen said. "Maybe he's asking for you."

Legolas kept his darker thoughts to himself. He had burdened Arwen enough; still, he squeezed her hand a little harder.

They were given way up the stairs to Elrond's study, the home of all ill news in Legolas' mind. They day that Imladris was all splendour again for him, without the shadow cast from these grim days, was farther away than Legolas could comprehend.

Elrond, Celebrian, Galadriel, and Celeborn awaited them. Legolas wondered how much more of his grief was doomed to face a jury of the most powerful beings in Middle Earth.

Legolas dropped Arwen's hand, set his jaw, and steeled himself to look Elrond in the face. "It's my father, isn't it?"

"His exposure to the Black Breath left him vulnerable," Elrond said. "I'm afraid he's not bearing the news of your mother well."

"May I see him?"

"He asked to be left alone."

"May I be disobedient?"

Elrond smiled a little at that, but it quickly faded. "He does not want you to see him as he is, Legolas."

"It's too late for that. I've seen the scars—"

"The scars are gone," Galadriel said. "But the full force of your father's grief is upon him now."

"Then I should be with him," Legolas said defiantly to the Lady of the Golden Wood.

"Legolas, I revealed to your father the truth of how your mother died. It is yours to know as well if you choose."

The sight of his mother laid out on a stone altar, the feel of her cold hand unmoving in his had been Legolas' vision of the moment of his mother's death. Facing that had been overwhelming enough without considering how the knife went into her, how she had bled.

"Do you think my father is going to die, Lady Galadriel?"

"Your father is hurt beyond what any other can repair. His recuperation is his task alone, a long and thankless one. His prize will be eternal life without his wife. This is not a dragon or the edge of a knife. This pain will live inside him as a constant and undying threat. It may kill him today or a hundred years from now. It is not something he will ever fully recover from. It is something he will have to survive for the rest of time."

Legolas stared at Galadriel as she spoke, feeling his eyes widen and fill with tears at her hopeless words, her cold tone. He was too transfixed to move as she came towards him. She took firm hold of his shoulders, shaking his tears from him.

"Your father has no strength he can share with you now, Legolas. Come what may, you have only yourself. It is for you alone to decide what you will see and what your will ignore, and the wisdom you gain may save your people. Any minute you could ascend your father's throne. Choose wisely, and choose you must."

Galadriel released him and Legolas nearly lost his balance as if he had been dropped from a great height. He looked up at her, feeling no taller than a child.

"I…" Legolas started, compelled to speak under Galadriel's singular gaze though he did not know what to say. "I…"

He wanted his mother. He wanted his father. But that was out of his power, perhaps forever. Everything had been out of his control since he got here.

"Show me," he said, standing up straight, coming nearly to Galadriel's height.

"As you wish," she said. She took his arm.

Legolas watched his mother pull herself out of the mud while others fell around her, watched her maim and kill with precision. He felt her panic and her rage. He saw his father bloody and dying. When his mother reached for the knife, he felt as though he were in a nightmare where he could not scream, certain that evil blade in his father's hand was going to be the undoing of his family. She touched the hilt and the vision went black.

It was like coming around himself, the world reforming from blur and shadows, as he saw the orcs surrounding her, heard their voices.

"Master won't be happy unless we got the princeling too."

_Legolas!_

When he heard his mother's voice say his name—the last time he would ever hear it—Legolas knew what was going to happen not through Galadriel, but through his mother. She was going to kill them all, she was going to do it for him, and her love would cost her her life.

Legolas wrenched his hand away from Galadriel and felt himself falling through infinite darkness. He still felt the fire of his mother's will to fight and reached for footholds, for a wall, for anything. Freeing himself from Galadriel's vision seemed only to take a stone out of a dam of all thoughts he had had since arriving here. His mother lying beside him as they watched the stars when he was a child, the smell of her hair. Catching a proud smile of her approval as she watched him in the archery yard.

_Legolas!_

His father catching his mother in his arms as Legolas lay in bed, stopping her frantic and violent fists. She screamed for vengeance on the evil encroaching on their kingdom, the evil that had almost taken their son's life. Legolas remembered how it felt to lay dying on the forest floor, spider venom in his veins, and what it had meant to see his father's face then, to hear his voice. His father had saved his life.

Legolas raged at himself for failing to do the same.

"Legolas!"

He looked up and saw Arwen hovering over him. Everything else was dark with nightfall. The floor was hard beneath his back. The sound of the pounding rain flooded his ears.

"I can't," he said, but his breathlessness gave him only a whisper.

"Give him a moment." Elrond swept down beside Arwen, leaning inches from Legolas' face. "Can you move?"

He tested his legs, his arms. His flesh tingled cold, then hot.

"Are you all right?" Arwen asked.

Legolas managed a nod and took Elladen and Elrohir's offered hands to be pulled to his feet. He clutched to them while he recovered his balance, fighting whatever supernatural weight it was that tried to bring him to his knees. He looked up at Galadriel standing placidly a few steps from him. If she were in his mind now, would he feel it?

"I don't want to see any more," he said.

Galadriel nodded and folded her hands in front of her. "Very well. It may be up to you to put your kingdom back together—"

"My father's kingdom."

"And you should know what happened."

"I do. My mother died, along with a hundred others. And it is my duty to see that my father was not killed that day as well."

"That is not for you to—"

"But it is! I am his son! My mother fought for me! My father fought for me! I will _not_ sit by and wait for my father to die!"

Elladen and Elrohir held him tight to keep from charging at Galadriel.

"Legolas." Elrond stepped in front of him and laid a calming hand on his shoulder.

"Let me fight for him," Legolas said.

"Go." Elrond nodded for his sons to release him and Legolas took off at a run down the steps.

"You will cost Mirkwood the leader it needs," Galadriel said. "Your compassion will only cripple him. Legolas will only be king when he learns and accepts the nature of duty."

"Perhaps allowing him to do what he needs to do for his father will teach him what he can do for his people," Elrond said. He looked not at Galadriel, but at his children all standing before him. "A shadow is rising in Middle Earth. We will all do well to remember compassion and mercy in the days to come, or we are no better than our enemy."

"Mirkwood will have the support of Lorien," Celeborn said. "Whatever happens."

"Ruling through such pain will be no easy task for either of them," Galadriel said. "We must all take wisdom from this. The day may come when any of us may understand this sorrow."

_The day _will_ come, Elrond Half-Elven. And the world may not be so kind when we are sundered and alone._


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

Thranduil sat up against the headboard for an age, staring out into the empty, silent room, but his mind was far away. Every time he watched Galadriel's vision unfold in his mind, he saw another face he recognized, another fallen comrade. He raged at his own lifeless body as Aradess tried to wake him. He tried to bargain for a way back to that moment, to stay bloody and dying against that tree if he could trade for her life. If he had died the moment that knife went through him, Aradess might have let go of her fight, she might have escaped to Legolas' side to keep him safe, and both of them away from danger. He would have gladly given his life for that.

The cool air and the winter rain made Thranduil's skin prickle and brought him back to his dim room in Imladris. His cave of exile, empty of visitors for hours now at his own command. He expected Galadriel kept her omniscient gaze on him somehow; it was a credit to Elrond that he was letting someone suffer and die under his own roof—or a credit to Thranduil that he had pushed to the bottom of Elrond's patience and obligation to his healing arts. Legolas had comfort somewhere and Thranduil was certain that it would never cease to be given, not here in the Last Homely House.

Feeling the cold was like being pricked with a thousand needles, though that may have been the work of Thranduil's anguished mind. Physical pain was more bearable than his breaking heart, his fading grace. The cold hurt his bare skin, his throat as he breathed it in. Reflexes that had sustained thousands of years of life because enormous tasks, each breath, each heartbeat more difficult than the last. Galadriel had restored his glamour in her last moments in his presence, but he could gaze down at his immaculate flesh and see the truth. He could hear his own screams when he thought of his burns. The slash from Dagorlad conjured the screams of a hundred other voices, a battlefield of slaughter. But the single mark that should have scarred his palm brought his mind to silence—Aradess' silence, never to speak or sing or laugh ever again. A silence that echoed on as far as Thranduil could comprehend.

He should have died when he found Aradess' body, just lay down beside her and let go. He should have died pinned to that tree, the morgul poison drowning his heart. He should have died at his father's side, or in that dragon's cave far from home, long before he had ever met Aradess, before he could corrupt her life with his miserable fate. She could have been someone else's wife. Legolas could have been someone else's son. Alive. Happy.

Thranduil pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, but the cry escaped anyway, squeezed from his throat, from his eyes in tears. He wilted against the headboard, tilted his face to the ceiling. The gods, fate, mortality, whatever it was would not strike him down.

He watched Aradess' battle again. He watched her touch his face, his chest, kiss him, but he could not feel it. He could not imagine all the touches and kisses from the centuries before, as if she had only been a ghost then too. Every memory was tainted with the knowledge that she was doomed to die. She was gone to where he could never reach her, not unless...

A dark night fell and Thranduil rose from his bed. He was unsteady on weak legs and even his Elven sight was failing him now. At last he reached the robe lying across the foot of the bed and heaved it onto his shoulders. The heavy wool and velvet could not pierce the cold that had settled inside him.

He limped towards the far corner of the room where his effects had been kept after being stripped from him the night of his arrival. He picked through the rings collected in the bowl on the worktable, past the silver and gold filigree and the great aquamarine stone to a simple band forged of mithril. Thranduil slid it onto his right forefinger, watched it glitter even in the dark against his pale skin. He wore the silver and Aradess the gold. The two trees of Valinor, the moon and the sun, the night and the day, the cold king and his golden queen. The living and the dead.

Thranduil picked up the long, thin knife Elrond kept at hand for creating his medicines and stole out into the corridor.

It was a long way from the infirmary to the sanctuary, but Imladris seemed to have gone still in its grief. Guards and the occasional wandering Elf were easy to avoid. All his winding through the back passages finally brought him to the stairs. Thranduil climbed up, one hand gripping the railing, the other, the knife. He fortified himself to be quick, before Galadriel's or Elrond's intuitions could alert them to his intentions. He could not come back down these stairs, could not go back to that bed, could never go home again. They called it Mirkwood now. The great Greenwood had fallen to corruption and darkness. It did not need a king.

The catafalque shone like a pillar of moonlight, and upon it was Aradess, just as Galadriel had shown him. Pale and pure, nothing of the mud or blood of her final battle. Thranduil closed his hand around hers, their silver and gold bands sliding across each other.

"Forgive me, melui-nín," he whispered as he bent to kiss her forehead. He brushed his hand against her red hair. She was cold, but so was he. He could barely feel himself touching her, but soon they would not be a world apart.

Thranduil poised the knife above his heart and gazed down at Aradess' face. A moment of darkness and then he would see her alive again, never to be parted, their eternal vows never to be broken.

Aradess' emerald pendant glittered on her shrouded breast, a small leaf on a long chain of delicate silver. Legolas had given it to her on his one-hundredth birthday, the same day he had given Thranduil the aquamarine ring. Thranduil had marvelled then at how one hundred years had passed; now it had been three hundred since Thranduil had held his tiny prince in his arms. He felt the weight, the warmth of holding his infant son; the memory was the first whole one he had conjured, somehow untouched by his heartbreak. Legolas sitting on his knee as a child, his golden hair like the sun itself. Legolas chasing through the woods on too-long adolescent legs after some quarry, the smile on his face as he raised his first bow.

Thranduil braced himself against the stone altar as he remembered with painful clarity the day he had had to take his grown son into his arms. Legolas had separated from the hunting party and been attacked by a spider—the evil spawn of Shelob were rare in the forest then. Father and son had fought and killed it together, and then Legolas had collapsed, twin punctures on his shoulders bleeding. Thranduil had picked him up and started to run back to the palace, but it was too far. The bleeding did not stop and Legolas took a fever. His lips turned white. When Thranduil stopped and laid him on the ground, Legolas started to convulse with pain.

Thranduil sat Legolas up and tore open the back of his shirt to expose the bite marks on either side of his neck. Legolas screamed when Thranduil cut him, careful slits on either side of the wounds with his hunting knife. If Thranduil had thought about his son's precious blood in his mouth he could not have done it; he drew and spat as quickly as he could. Legolas' cries grew thinner, he grew weaker and Thranduil had to clutch the front of him to keep him upright while he sucked out the spider venom. When the wounds had stopped bleeding, Thranduil pressed the crown of his head to his son's back, felt his even breathing, and wept with relief.

The sound of Legolas' cry out in the woods had ripped his heart from him. The sight of his blue eyes as he woke up healed and well had brought Thranduil back to life again.

"Ada."

The knife Thranduil held clattered loudly to the stone floor of the sanctuary.

"Legolas—"

Legolas threw his arms around him, the front of Thranduil's robe caught tight in his fists. He pressed his forehead between his father's shoulders and cried, half-screaming with grief.

His own face burning, Thranduil stared into Aradess' face for guidance. Her cold fingers still held his, but did not have the beckoning gravity they did before. Legolas clutched him as if he might fall from the earth without his father.

"Ada! Please stay with me. Tell me what to do and I will do it, but please… Please!"

Thranduil squeezed Aradess' hand one last time and turned around to catch his son in his arms.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen**

Thranduil handed Legolas up the steps to kneel at Aradess' open burial mound. He leaned heavily on his cane as he watched his son bow forward to press his forehead to his mother's. If there were tears they were silent now—exhausted after Legolas' desperate pleas in the sanctuary and only replenished after two days of rest and recuperation. Thranduil could only imagine what sorrow Legolas had endured alone when he first discovered what had happened, with neither familiar voices to offer comfort nor the protection of his family's embrace.

Thranduil laid a hand over his heart, checking that this new break from his guilt would not be the one that destroyed him, not when he had come this far. The thousand pieces scattered in his breast fluttered unevenly and Thranduil had to lean harder on his cane, like an ancient mortal man feeling every single one of his five thousand years.

Legolas finally sat up, his loose gold hair settling down his back, worn without ornament or binding as Aradess preferred herself. His fine clothes were borrowed, black upon black. He had nothing else to show remembrance of his mother, none of the clothes she favoured on him or jewels she had given him. There would opportunity for that memorial when they returned to Mirkwood, when they would honour all of the fallen. Though Elrond had offered everything they could need to bear Aradess back home, Thranduil had declined. Having Aradess' body nearby would not ease his pain, and he hated to think of how her burial could be desecrated by the violence to come. No, better that she lie in the tranquility of Imladris.

Aradess had been put in her grave in a white and silver shroud that Celebrian had given. She wore only her golden wedding ring and her leaf pendant, and her hair was fanned loose around her. Aradess the queen would be memorialized and honoured with great magnificence by her subjects in Mirkwood. Aradess the wife and mother had now those tokens that she cherished most, all she needed to run free and wild through the endless green woods of paradise.

"Namárië, Naneth," Legolas said softly. He laid an arrow at her side, one of his own, a final symbol of Mirkwood. "My heart shall weep until I see you again."

Legolas returned to Thranduil's side and took his arm.

"Do not despair that your mother loved you," Thranduil said when he saw his son's tears. "You gave her peace in her final moments in this world."

Legolas looked at him. "Truly?"

"She loved you more than life itself from the day you were born. _You_ are her immortality, ion-nín. Her spirit will live on in all the days of your life."

"Lady Galadriel tried to show me what happened. I thought I should try, so that someone would know, so that she would be remembered to her last… but I couldn't do it. I knew she was going to give her life for mine and I couldn't… I'm sorry, Ada."

"No," Thranduil said, taking his arm from Legolas' and wrapping it around his shoulders. "You do not need to bear any of that."

"It made me think of the day we fought the spider. I saw her anger, I saw what it took for you to stop her from running out into the woods to take her vengeance. From that day I always feared what she might do if anything were to happen to me."

"Your mother was so strong. I knew only fear that day, fear like I had never felt in my entire life. I would have locked you away if that was what it would take to keep your safe. Instead, your mother gave you your white knives and bid you to practice until you were lethal with them. I wish—"

The winter wind blew through the sparse trees and Thranduil shivered as it scraped over even what little flesh he had exposed.

_I wish you had her instead of me._

"You should be inside, Ada," Legolas said. He went to the side of burial mound and picked up the cover of woven branches. He stared down into the grave and finally laid the cover in its place.

Whether Aradess remained here in the forest of Imladris or had passed into the halls of paradise as Thranduil's broken faith had taught him, she would have the sight of the stars forever.

* * *

Arwen knew the time for her own shock and pain was over, but she could not help crying at Aradess' grave. She clung to her brothers on either side of her, trying to keep her grief within their shield, away from their mother who still looked so unwell, away from their grandmother who gazed at the simple burial mound with no sign of feeling in her face. They had gathered only for a moment of silence—their own small memorial after Thranduil and Legolas had completed their own—but now some time had passed and none of them had moved.

"Long now the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years," Galadriel said suddenly, reciting from her own beautiful, sad song. "And here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven tears."

Arwen's surprise stilled her tears and when she glanced at her grandmother, she saw her take Celeborn's hand beside her. Celeborn closed his eyes and moved his lips in silent prayer. Together they stepped forward and bowed deeply before Aradess, then they turned back and gave Celebrian, Elladen, Arwen, and Elrohir each an embrace and a kiss in turn before leaving the grove.

"Will we truly just let Lord Thranduil and Legolas go, Ada?" Elladen asked.

"Of course," Elrond replied. "We must let them do as they wish."

"Even if what they wish might get them killed? With no escort, barely armed when no one knows what might be out there waiting for them? Do we not owe Lady Aradess more than that?"

"Offering help where none is wanted is not help," Elrond said evenly to his son's rising voice. "They know how to keep themselves safe. They will travel lightly and with all haste, and they will return safely within the walls of Mirkwood."

"But, Ada—"

"Stop, Elladen," Arwen said. "They'll be all right. They have Lady Aradess watching over them, don't they, Naneth?"

Celebrian smiled hopefully, but it broke the mask of calm she wore and tears began to pour down her cheeks. Arwen broke away from her brothers and embraced her mother. Despite her appearance of frailty, Celebrian's hold on Arwen was fierce and binding.

"Elladen, Elrohir," Celebrian beckoned her sons. They obeyed and Arwen was squeezed between her mother and her brothers, and a moment later her father as well.

Arwen had watched Legolas and Thranduil's private memorial from a distance, just for a moment. Two seemed so small a number when she thought about what they would have to face. All she could do was be thankful for her own complete family and offer her hopeful wishes to the universe for Legolas and Thranduil.

Safety, good health, and peace.

Arwen glanced at the covered grave beside her and said her prayer again. She offered them to Aradess' ears, trusting that she heard them, that whatever strength Aradess found in the halls beyond would grow with Arwen's faith. Arwen had nothing else to believe, nothing else she could do but pray and say goodbye.

Arwen stayed close to her mother throughout the day, while everyone else was called away to assist with final preparations for the departure of their guests. In one small mercy, the sun lit the valley after a dismal morning and the clouds dispersed far and wide, making way for a brilliant starry night.

As had become the norm, Celebrian slipped into a deep rest after nightfall, her pure grace still plagued by the touch of the Black Breath. Arwen lit candles and left the light to guard her mother while she ventured out across the sprawling halls and staircases.

She found a closed door at her destination, but even her gentle knock pushed it slightly open. She could see Legolas standing at the window, flooded with moonlight.

"Come in," he said without turning.

Arwen opened the door fully and stepped inside. "You are ready for your journey tomorrow?"

"Yes," Legolas replied. He wore the clothes that he had arrived in, plain hunting garb now cleaned of mud. His weapons were laid out on the narrow bed.

"Your people will be glad to see you." Arwen kept herself a few paces away. She recognized this man, the aloof and distant prince; it was not the Legolas she had taken into her heart as a brother.

"I hope you will be as gentle with yourself as you will be with them," Arwen said to his back.

"They need me to be strong," Legolas said, the affected sternness in his voice diminishing with every word. "My father needs me to be strong."

"Legolas—"

"Thank you for indulging my feelings, Lady Arwen. You and your family gave me comfort in a time of great pain. But now—"

"Don't close yourself off, Legolas. Don't let this fester in your heart."

"I am perfectly capable of controlling my feelings now. I have to."

Arwen came to stand in front of him, forcing him to look at her.

"I think you are feeling your pain more than ever. You're holding your breath."

Legolas' gaze finally met hers. His princely comportment might have held him up, but his eyes told the truth.

"Let me help you while I can," Arwen said. She set her hands on his shoulders and rose up to kiss him. She was gentle against his rigidity and pulled back when his lips finally opened with a desperate breath.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," he said. "I don't know if I can do what my father needs or what my people need. I can't be what Lady Galadriel commanded me. I can't—"

"You will only be strong for your father and his kingdom if you take time for yourself, Legolas. Be strong enough to face your pain—don't bury it within yourself. It will heal only in the light. Take this with you." Arwen kissed him again and this time Legolas leaned into her, cupped her face in his hands, held her until his breaths came even and full.

"You are your mother's son, Legolas," Arwen said once he parted from her. "You alone will define who you want to be."

Legolas smiled a little at that. He started to gather Arwen's hands in his, but she let go.

"Don't say goodbye until tomorrow," she said.

"Then will you stay?" he asked. "Just for a while?"

"Of course."

* * *

"Thank you, Elrond," Thranduil said with a deep dip of his head. "I owe you a great debt."

Elrond waved the sentiment away with his hand. "If you need anything, I hope you will not hesitate to ask. We must keep each other close in times like these."

Thranduil was about to repeat his gratitude when Elrond pulled him into a tight embrace.

"Look after yourself, Thranduil Oropherion," Elrond said, the same words said after a war a thousand years ago. "Travel safely."

With an obedient nod to Elrond, Thranduil moved up the line to Celebrian. Her golden glow was dimmed beneath thick shawls.

"Lady Celebrian, I am so sorry for what has been brought upon your family."

"We will be fine," Celebrian said with a small, kind smile. She reached a hand out from her wrappings and set it against his chest. "Peace be with you and your people, Lord Thranduil. Imladris will always answer your call."

"Lorien as well," Celeborn said from where he stood beside his daughter. He extended a hand and Thranduil grasped his arm in reply.

"My thanks, Lord Celeborn," Thranduil said. He moved on to Galadriel, but kept an arm's distance from her.

"We all mourn with Mirkwood," Galadriel said. "Please take our prayers with you."

"Thank you, Lady Galadriel."

His formal goodbyes completed, Thranduil searched for Legolas, who had preceded him up the line. Legolas was in the middle of a final embrace, a golden head surrounded by the three dark ones of Elrond and Celebrian's children. Even a small swell of gladness made Thranduil's fragile heart crack. Legolas should have had his own siblings. There was no good reason Thranduil could think of now as to why he and Aradess should have delayed in having more children.

"Legolas," Thranduil called as he mounted his horse.

Legolas extracted himself from the tangle of arms that encircled him. Still, he was held back a moment longer. The twins grasped his shoulders—shoulders now laden with bow and quiver and knives, as they would be for some time to come. Arwen laid a hand on Legolas' cheek in a silent, tender farewell; Legolas hesitated to leave her. It was she who had to step away and bid him to go.

Legolas swung up onto his horse beside Thranduil and nodded, ready.

"Namárië," Thranduil said.

All of them—Mirkwood, Imladris, and Lorien Elves—laid hands over their hearts and offered them to each other.

Thranduil turned his gaze towards the rising sun, towards the trees that guarded his beloved Aradess. His farewell to her was silent, a violent shudder in his breast. An eternal love turned to eternal pain in his heart.


	17. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_Third Age 2510_

Two white horses and their dark riders thundered up the narrow bridge onto the small eastern landing of the House of Imladris. Only the rushing Bruinen fifty feet below greeted them. There was no one to be seen or heard; everything was still and silent under the late summer sky.

They slipped off the hoods hiding their distinctive gold hair, the cloth masks concealing their fair faces. Since leaving the walls of the kingdom they had kept up their disguises. The woods and the mountains had become dangerous places for all.

"Find them," Thranduil said. "I will speak to Elrond."

Legolas nodded. He and his father took their separate ways at the top of the stairs. It had been centuries since Legolas had last wandered these halls. Still, he had to ignore the instinct that pulled him towards the infirmary and the sanctuary that he knew from long ago. He was not searching for the sick or the dying.

He listened for familiar voices, but there was not a sound in the whole of the valley, not even the wind. Legolas hesitated to call out, wary of breaking the total silence.

"Legolas."

He whipped around at the voice, reflexes sending his hand to the knife hilt over his shoulder, but the tension immediately left his body and he sighed with relief. Any distance that the passing of time might have created between them vanished and Legolas felt his heart swell to see his sworn brother. "Elladen."

The eldest son of Elrond and Celebrian stood in the shadow of a doorway, dressed in deep grey clothes that would have been fine but for how rumpled they were. His dark hair was tied back, but disheveled, and he was barefoot.

"Elladen," Legolas said again as he rushed up the hallway and pulled Elladen into a brief embrace. "I am so sorry."

Elladen wavered on his feet when Legolas pulled away from him. "I didn't… I didn't dare think that you would come."

"Of course I did." Legolas offered a smile and a steadying hand against Elladen's shoulder. "My father is here as well. Where is everyone?"

"Arwen has been in her room since we… came back. My father had been wandering the valley. I don't know where he is. And Elrohir—" Elladen's eyes grew wide and his voice cracked over his brother's name. "Elrohir joined the wardens in Lorien. He swore to shed blood for what happened. He didn't even say goodbye."

Legolas' eyes burned watching the tears fall down Elladen's face. He blinked hard while Elladen stared at the floor.

"Why don't we find something to eat and take it to Arwen?" Legolas said gently, though he was not certain Elladen could take even ten steps.

"I can't face her," Elladen said breathlessly.

"She's you sister. She needs you, Elladen."

"It's all my fault. I was too late to save my mother, and I wasn't even brave enough to take bloody vengeance for what was done to her. I can't face any of them." Elladen shrank away from Legolas and half-collapsed against the doorframe. "Go see Arwen."

"I'm not going to leave you, Elladen."

"I need to lie down. Go and I'll find you later. Thank you for coming all this way."

"Until later, then." Legolas watched Elladen shuffle away and disappear around a corner. He did not know where to start looking for Arwen's chambers. He followed corridors inside and outside. Finally he gave in to calling her name, but there was no response.

Legolas followed another hallway outside, taking comfort in the sunny afternoon. There was little shade from the slender trees; Legolas had forgotten that there were still golden woods filled with light and fresh air after a lifetime in the thick gloom of Mirkwood. Imladris was all beauty, all delicate arches and peaceful walkways. He remembered wondering if he would even find Imladris beautiful, after what had happened to him there. Twelve hundred years had nearly done it, but seeing the anguished ruin of Elladen's face had struck a fragile part of him like a hammer against glass.

The murmur of the Bruinen grew louder as Legolas circled back towards it. He descended a small flight of stone steps, though he was sure he would have to turn around to find a way back into the house. This had to be the edge, nothing but one domed pavilion gazing over the cliffs and down to the river.

A pavilion holding a woman wrapped in dark clothes.

"Arwen!"

She turned at her name and pressed a hand over her mouth when she saw him. She pulled his arms, his clothes as he ran up to her, clutching him tight to her, quivering in his embrace, but making no sound.

"Arwen, I'm so sorry. Tell me what I can do."

She shook her head against his shoulder. The dark veil she wore slid down her hair, revealing it to be jaggedly cut and only as long as her chin. Legolas laid a hand against her bare neck.

"Arwen, talk to me," Legolas said gently once her trembling began to lessen. He kissed her temple and waited until she finally loosened her hold on him.

"My mother is gone," she said, casting her wide grey eyes out over the edge of the cliff.

"I know."

Arwen pulled away and moved to the far side of the pavilion. She picked up a heavy grey shawl that lay on the bench and held it up to her face, breathing deeply.

"Is there anywhere safe for us to run away to, Legolas? If my mother can be abducted and tortured and your mother can be killed in bloodshed, what hope is there for us?"

"Perhaps it is our duty to fight for a new peace, as out mothers did in the age before us," Legolas replied.

Arwen shook her head. "I cannot fight for anything. I can hardly even breathe."

"Not today," Legolas said, coming to stand beside her. "But I promise there will come a day when it doesn't hurt like this."

"I can't see beyond nightfall. Beyond a time where my father is inconsolable, Elladen isn't speaking to me, and Elrohir is gone. How did you do it, Legolas? How did you do this alone?"

"I didn't," he said, wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "I had you."

That only renewed Arwen's tears. She buried her face in her mother's shawl to stifle her weeping.

"I'm here for as long as you need me, nîth-nín."

Arwen nestled against him, leaning heavier on him by the moment.

"Why don't you lie down for a while? You're exhausted."

"I have terrible dreams."

"I'll keep them away." Legolas coaxed Arwen to lie down on the bench, making a pillow of her mother's shawl on his lap. She curled up and was soon comfortable. She closed her eyes as Legolas stroked her short hair and softly hummed. She did not stir or whimper so long as her brother guarded her.

* * *

Thranduil suspected that he would find Elrond far from the house, far from any other soul, so he was not surprised when he found him at the top of the bell tower in the buildings on the other side of the footbridge. But nothing could prepare him for the sight of the Lord of Imladris brought so low.

Elrond was on his knees, one arm anchoring him to a narrow pillar as he stared out into the west.

"It was an impossible decision to put before a young man," Elrond said, his voice broken. He gave no other sign of noticing Thranduil's quiet entrance. "I knew nothing about the true meaning of immortality. All I saw was strength and invincibility, a life free of plague and pain. I watched my brother die of old age, and his children after him, and when I realized that the broken heart in my chest would be the only one I would have for the rest of my Valar-given life, I could not help but feel that Elros had made the wiser choice.

"But I learned to accept that mortals die, and that war makes mortals of us all. I learned that I could honour that sacrifice and loss by rebuilding peace once the battle was over. It gave me solace, and the peace that I had committed myself to brought me a wife and three beautiful children.

"Millenia of war and fear, and hope and prosperity, so that one day Celebrian could be taken and tormented and brought back to me to prove that I have learned nothing at all. There was nothing I could do to make her whole again, to make her stay. How do my children go on in this world when they lost their mother to hopelessness. How do I…"

Thranduil sat down beside Elrond, his back to another pillar, one leg hanging over the edge of the tower. "None of them wanted to go with her?"

"They all agreed that they wanted to stay with me." Elrond waved a hand over his eyes and wept.

Thranduil looked out at the golden sky, imagining the glimmer of the sea and feeling the stir of an ancient, urgent pain in his breast.

"I should have made them go," Elrond said. "There is nothing here for them but violence and darkness."

"Once all of that has passed and the world is new again, the peace will belong to them, Elrond," Thranduil said. "They will share Celebrian's kindness and wisdom with the world."

Elrond's tears only fell faster.

"Did you get to tell her that you loved her?" Thranduil asked.

"Yes."

"Then you did everything that was in your power to do. That's more than what many people get, mortal and immortal alike."

"But your wife was taken from you," Elrond said, his voice low. "My wife _left_."

Thranduil looked sharply back at Elrond and saw him press a shaking hand against his mouth.

"I didn't mean…"

"Of course not," Thranduil said, hoping he appeared still and steady while Elrond's words still resounded inside him.

Elrond did not speak again while they watched the sun go down. Darkness would fall, but the dawn would come. It would feel like a lifetime to the grieving hearts in Imladris and Lorien, and the frantically beating hearts of those fighting the evil in Mirkwood. It would feel like the darkness was eternal, but the dawn would come.

* * *

A/N: I want to thank everyone who took time to read and review and favourite this little work of mine. It was meant to be four-part story written in the month leading up to my birthday, but it quickly took on a life of its own. Fanfiction has been close to my heart for a long time, and I never stopped imagining new stories on top of stories I already knew, even when I moved on to original work. I'll confess that I was looking for a little positive feedback after years of keeping my writing mostly hidden away. My return to the great community here really brightened my spirits and sparked my creativity in that boundless, shameless way that I remembered from years ago. I don't know how much work you'll see from me in the future, but I have taken all of your positivity with me into my other projects, and for that I am eternally grateful. Yours, A.


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